Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society

The cognitive reflection test (CRT; Frederick, 2005) assesseshow well adults can reflect on the validity of their ownthinking, and it has been shown to predict several measures ofnormative reasoning. Here, we sought to create a version ofthe cognitive reflection test suitable for elementary-school-aged children, which could be used to study the emergence ofcognitive reflection as well as its role in the development ofother forms of higher-order cognition. We identified eightchild-friendly questions that elicit an incorrect, intuitiveresponse that must be inhibited in order to provide a correct,analytic response. We compared children’s and adults’performance on these questions (dubbed the CRT-D) toseveral measures of rational thinking (denominator neglect,base rate sensitivity, syllogistic reasoning, otherside thinking)and thinking dispositions (actively open-minded thinking,need for cognition). The CRT-D was a significant predictor ofrational thinking and normative thinking dispositions in bothchildren and adults. Moreover, performance on the CRT-Dcorrelated with performance on the original CRT in adults,and in children, it predicted rational thinking and normativethinking dispositions above and beyond age. These resultssuggest that the CRT-D is a valid measure of children’scognitive reflection and pave the way for future investigationsof its development and its developmental consequences.