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ORIGINAL RESEARCH article

Front. Dev. Psychol.
Sec. Cognitive Development
Volume 2 - 2024 | doi: 10.3389/fdpys.2024.1441395
This article is part of the Research Topic Advances in Metacognition and Reflection View all 7 articles

Children's Cognitive Reflection Predicts Successful Interpretations of Covariation Data

Provisionally accepted
Andrew G. Young Andrew G. Young 1*Andrew Shtulman Andrew Shtulman 2
  • 1 Northeastern Illinois University, Chicago, United States
  • 2 Occidental College, Los Angeles, California, United States

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

    Cognitive reflection is the ability and disposition to reflect on one's own thinking, allowing a person to identify and correct judgments grounded in intuition rather than logic. Cognitive reflection strongly predicts school-aged children’s understanding of counterintuitive science concepts. Here, we asked whether children’s cognitive reflection similarly predicts a domain-general scientific skill: the interpretation of covariation data. Five- to 12-year-olds (N = 74) completed a children’s Cognitive Reflection Test (CRT-D) and measures of executive functioning. They also interpreted covariation data presented in 2 x 2 contingency tables. CRT-D performance predicted children’s overall accuracy and the strategies they used to evaluate the contingency tables, even after adjusting for their age, set-shifting ability, inhibitory control, and working memory. Thus, the relationship between cognitive reflection and statistical reasoning emerges early in development. These findings suggest cognitive reflection is broadly involved in children’s scientific thinking, supporting domain-general data-interpretation skills in addition to domain-specific conceptual knowledge.

    Keywords: Cognitive reflection, scientific thinking, Evidence evaluation, statistical reasoning, Data Interpretation, development

    Received: 31 May 2024; Accepted: 30 Aug 2024.

    Copyright: © 2024 Young and Shtulman. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

    * Correspondence: Andrew G. Young, Northeastern Illinois University, Chicago, United States

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