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ABSTRACT
Background/Study Context: This study evaluated adult age differences in the original three-item Cognitive Reflection Test (CRT; Frederick, 2005, The Journal of Economic Perspectives, 19, 25–42) and an expanded seven-item version of that test (Toplak et al., 2013, Thinking and Reasoning, 20, 147–168). The CRT is a numerical problem-solving test thought to capture a disposition towards either rapid, intuition-based problem solving (Type I reasoning) or a more thoughtful, analytical problem-solving approach (Type II reasoning). Test items are designed to induce heuristically guided errors that can be avoided if using an appropriate numerical representation of the test problems.
Methods: We evaluated differences between young adults and old adults in CRT performance and correlates of CRT performance. Older adults (ages 60 to 80) were paid volunteers who participated in experiments assessing age differences in self-regulated learning. Young adults (ages 17 to 35) were students participating for pay as part of a project assessing measures of critical thinking skills or as a young comparison group in the self-regulated learning study.
Results: There were age differences in the number of CRT correct responses in two independent samples. Results with the original three-item CRT found older adults to have a greater relative proportion of errors based on providing the intuitive lure. However, younger adults actually had a greater proportion of intuitive errors on the long version of the CRT, relative to older adults. Item analysis indicated a much lower internal consistency of CRT items for older adults.
Conclusion: These outcomes do not offer full support for the argument that older adults are higher in the use of a “Type I” cognitive style. The evidence was also consistent with an alternative hypothesis that age differences were due to lower levels of numeracy in the older samples. Alternative process-oriented evaluations of how older adults solve CRT items will probably be needed to determine conditions under which older adults manifest an increase in the Type I dispositional tendency to opt for superficial, heuristically guided problem representations in numerical problem-solving tasks.
Acknowledgments
We thank Aimee Kudela, Ryan Krepps, and Alyssa Candelmo for assistance with data collection on the ODNI IARPA contract number 2014-13121700006 portion of the project. We thank Antonio Lee, Aishwarya Murthy, Katie Lively, and Natalie Lembeck for help with older adult data collection. We also thank Michael Bixter for comments on the manuscript.
Funding
The research was partially supported by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI), Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity (IARPA), via contract number 2014-13121700006. The views and conclusions contained herein are those of the authors and should not be interpreted as necessarily representing the official policies or endorsements, either expressed or implied, of the ODNI, IARPA, or the U.S. Government. The U.S. Government is authorized to reproduce and distribute reprints for governmental purposes notwithstanding any copyright annotation thereon. This research was also supported in part by a Ruth L. Kirschstein National Research Service Award (NRSA) Institutional Research Training Grant from the National Institutes of Health (National Institute on Aging), grant no. 5T32AG000175.