{"status":"ok","message-type":"work","message-version":"1.0.0","message":{"indexed":{"date-parts":[[2026,9,5]],"date-time":"2026-09-05T01:12:48Z","timestamp":1788570768539,"version":"build-2803163510"},"reference-count":60,"publisher":"Frontiers Media SA","license":[{"start":{"date-parts":[[2026,9,4]],"date-time":"2026-09-04T00:00:00Z","timestamp":1788480000000},"content-version":"vor","delay-in-days":0,"URL":"https:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by\/4.0\/"}],"content-domain":{"domain":["frontiersin.org"],"crossmark-restriction":true},"short-container-title":["Front. Psychol."],"abstract":"<jats:p>Conversational AI systems are used for task support, cognitive offloading, companionship, self-disclosure, and mood regulation. Research on these uses is distributed across trust, reliance, attachment, companionship, problematic use, and dependence, although these labels refer to different processes. This article presents a critical narrative synthesis of 51 peer-reviewed records retained from a curated working bibliography of 56 items. The corpus was assembled iteratively through database searching and citation chasing during 2025 and early 2026. Complete search histories and duplicate-removal logs were not retained, so the review is not presented as a reproducible systematic review. The sole author completed selection, extraction, coding, appraisal, and synthesis. Conceptual and measurement papers were separated from 22 first-order empirical records. Sixteen of those empirical records provided lower-leverage evidence and six provided moderate-leverage evidence. Mainly cross-sectional studies identified concurrent associations between stronger AI engagement or dependence-oriented scores and loneliness, social anxiety, depressive symptoms, low self-esteem, attachment insecurity, academic stress, escapism, anthropomorphic tendency, fatigue, weaker critical thinking, procrastination, and lower well-being. These associations do not establish prediction or consequence. Qualitative studies described both relational support and distress linked to emotionally significant use. Quasi-experimental and multi-study research reported some short-term reductions in loneliness and social anxiety, but this evidence remains limited and context dependent. The synthesis develops a provisional framework that separates instrumental-cognitive from relational-emotional use and treats regulation as a distinct dimension. The framework is an interpretive organization of the corpus, not a validated factor structure, causal pathway, or clinical model. Current evidence supports careful construct separation and design-matched claims, while stronger longitudinal, cross-cultural, and platform-comparative research is needed.<\/jats:p>","DOI":"10.3389\/fpsyg.2026.1827795","type":"journal-article","created":{"date-parts":[[2026,9,5]],"date-time":"2026-09-05T00:42:30Z","timestamp":1788568950000},"update-policy":"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.3389\/crossmark-policy","source":"Crossref","is-referenced-by-count":0,"title":["A critical narrative synthesis of psychological correlates, measurement, and reported findings on conversational AI engagement and dependence-related constructs"],"prefix":"10.3389","volume":"17","author":[{"given":"Deyu","family":"Yan","sequence":"first","affiliation":[{"name":"Advanced Institute for Confucian Studies, Shandong University","place":["Jinan, China"]}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]}],"member":"1965","published-online":{"date-parts":[[2026,9,4]]},"reference":[{"key":"ref1","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","first-page":"100381","DOI":"10.1016\/j.caeai.2025.100381","article-title":"The mediating role of academic stress, critical thinking and performance expectations in the influence of academic self-efficacy on AI dependence: case study in college students","volume":"8","author":"Acosta-Enriquez","year":"2025","journal-title":"Comput. 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