Whether generative AI (GenAI) use helps or hinders critical thinking remains contested, and existing accounts emphasize exposure to the tool rather than how a person structures their engagement with it. Extending Transactive Memory Systems (TMS) theory to human-AI partnerships, we test a structural account of critical thinking in GenAI-assisted academic work among 891 college students in the United States and Türkiye. Self-appraised thinking ability and confidence in the partnership shaped how much practical experience a person built up with GenAI, but neither predicted critical thinking directly. That experience mattered only through two downstream behaviors, dividing and coordinating cognitive labor with the tool, and actively reworking its output rather than accepting it as given. A multigroup comparison found this structure largely invariant, with two theoretically interpretable exceptions. This study offers a structural, TMS-based account of critical thinking in GenAI-assisted work.

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