An examination of Kagan's risk hypothesis for conceptual tempo

Third grade children (40 females and 40 males) were first classified with the Matching Familiar Figures Test and then were given an Incomplete Figures Test designed to test Kagan's risk hypothesis for conceptual tempo. In the latter test, the children were shown sets of line drawings in which each successive drawing in a set revealed progressively more of the given object. They were required to guess the identity of the object after seeing each drawing by making either a high risk "outloud" guess (scored with feedback) or a low risk "whisper" guess (scored with no feedback). As predicted, reflective children made significantly fewer incorrect outloud guesses and significantly more correct whisper guesses than the impulsive children. This demonstrated that the reflective children followed a more cautious guessing strategy than the impulsive children, which provided support for Kagan's risk hypothesis.