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Heuristic and analytic processing: age trends and associations with cognitive ability and cognitive styles
Judite V Kokis1, Robyn Macpherson, Maggie E Toplak
1University of Toronto, M5S 1V6, Ont, Canada.
Journal of Experimental Child Psychology
|October 16, 2002
Summary
As children develop, they increasingly use analytic thinking over heuristic thinking. Cognitive ability and thinking styles like actively open-minded thinking also predict analytic reasoning.
Area of Science:
- Cognitive Psychology
- Developmental Psychology
Background:
- Dual-process theories propose that reasoning involves both intuitive (heuristic) and deliberate (analytic) processes.
- Understanding developmental and individual differences in the balance between these processes is crucial for cognitive development research.
Purpose of the Study:
- To examine developmental changes in children's tendency to favor analytic over heuristic responses.
- To investigate the role of cognitive ability and cognitive style in analytic reasoning.
Main Methods:
- Three tasks were used, requiring analytic processing to override heuristic responses: inductive reasoning, deductive reasoning with belief bias, and probabilistic reasoning.
- Participants included children aged 10–11 and 13 years with varying cognitive abilities.
Main Results:
- Analytic responding significantly increased with age on inductive and deductive reasoning tasks.
- Higher cognitive ability was associated with greater analytic responding across all tasks.
- Cognitive style measures (actively open-minded thinking, need for cognition) explained additional variance in analytic responding beyond cognitive ability.
Conclusions:
- Analytic reasoning abilities develop throughout childhood, particularly in overcoming intuitive biases.
- Cognitive ability and specific thinking styles are important predictors of analytic reasoning in children.
- Findings support and extend dual-process theories of cognition and cognitive development.