Critical Thinking » Critical Thinking

Critical thinking is necessary across all academic domains and previous research has shown young children view adults as important sources of information when learning. The aim in this is study is to understand whether children’s use of adult explanations might alert them to the importance of using negative evidence as a component of critical thinking skills. Children will be presented with a game with play foods, in which the goal is to figure out the rule for “What goes in my basket?”, based on guesses and adult feedback. The child is read a story and asked questions designed to access their use of evidence to generate hypotheses. A computer-based game assess the child’s self-regulatory abilities. There will be a pre and post-test too assess whether children of vary ages can improve their critical thinking skills with guidance from adults.