> ChatGPT, asked to translate to a high schooler: "Basically, this study found that young people with depression sometimes struggle to break automatic habits, especially when they’re trying to avoid something bad and there isn’t a prize or reward for doing it."

The translation is just as much of a word salad as the original, just with simpler vocabulary. Worse, it mangles the key point.

Prepotent responses aren't "automatic habits," but overriding responses (e.g. pain) [1]. The "sometimes" qualifier is unsubstantiated when describing "association". And the struggle isn't amplified ("especially") when avoiding something bad absent reward, the first part of the sentence is conditional upon the absence of a reward. (It's nonsense to say pool drownings are especially common in pools.)

[1] https://dictionary.apa.org/prepotent-response

And engineers don't really deal with frictionless spherical cows, but high schoolers might. All models are wrong, but some are useful.

wow, you managed to make it more convoluted than the original.