Parenting Journal · Volume 3 · Issue 1 · Licensed source edition
The role of generative AI in facilitating children's creative thinking and cognitive development: a systematic scoping review
Originally published 2026-09-14 · Frontiers in Psychology
Frontiers Media SA · DOI 10.3389/fpsyg.2026.1880052 ↗
AI / system type
Generative AI/LLM and multimodal tools; scoping review
Child-facing evidenceExamines children or child-focused systems. Transfer to everyday family life must be assessed separately.
The AI connection
Reviews LLM and other generative text/image tools in children’s creative learning.
Why this reading matters
Maps an emerging child-focused GenAI literature with explicit evidence gaps.
Editorial reading guide · Independence
How can AI prompt my child’s creativity while preserving their own ideas?
Maps to Independence by examining when GenAI supports children’s creative choices and when it may displace their thinking.
Study context
24 evidence sources, including 22 primary empirical studies and two contextual sources
Age / stage: Children and adolescents; approximately 5–18 across contexts
Read with three questions
- Which activities give children an active creative role?
- How do formal and informal contexts differ?
- Which reported outcomes concern short tasks rather than durable cognitive development?
Keep the limits in view
No formal risk-of-bias appraisal or meta-analysis; heterogeneous measures and some non-peer-reviewed evidence prevent causal or durable-development conclusions.
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Original authorship, publication date, journal and DOI are preserved. This issue’s TRICK placement and reading questions are editorial additions, not claims made by the original authors.
Tianyue Niu; Huiying Liu; Patrick Pang; Yiming Taclis Luo; Ting Liu (2026). The role of generative AI in facilitating children's creative thinking and cognitive development: a systematic scoping review Frontiers in Psychology. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2026.1880052
Permissions checked against the saved article notice; repository publication notices screened 2026-11-04. This is not a new peer-review decision. The source authors and publishers are not represented as endorsing this issue.