Co-Cognition and Cognitive Drift: How Distributed Thought Becomes a Bounded Capability or a Drift Pathway

This paper explains the relationship between Co-Cognition and Cognitive Drift. Co-Cognition names a mode of distributed thought, while Cognitive Drift names a possible trajectory in which a person’s models, judgments, or attention become progressively less aligned with the conditions they are meant to navigate.The document shows how recursive representation can preserve meaning and expand cognitive capacity when a loop remains answerable to purpose, evidence, consequence, and independent judgment. It also traces how the same process can become a drift pathway when prior representations become the primary inputs to later thought, Semantic Fidelity weakens, and correction loses the authority to redirect the emerging frame.The paper provides diagnostic questions and intervention points for distinguishing bounded Co-Cognition from an increasingly self-referential cognitive loop