This paper presents an analysis of the reasoning of two 5-year old children’s use of argument from definition. The author uses the Argumentum Model of Topics to accomplish this task. A brief history of the “locus of definition” is presented, as well as a description of how and where the data were collected. More specifically, the data come from a study of students conducted for over 30 years in Switzerland. Two examples are discussed where an adult experimenter examined these children’s (...) responses to conservation of liquid and number tasks. The two examples of children’s responses were analyzed using the locus from definition. Results show that children are capable of providing responses indicating their beliefs and support for them that are beyond Piaget’s description of a preoperational child’s reasoning abilities. (shrink)

THE CHAPTERS and discussions in the volume integrate the various perspectives on critical thinking and stimulate new thinking about thinking. Chapters in the first section present several issues that concern critical thinking, and discuss the lack of core concepts and structures in the field of teaching and critical thinking. Chapter 4 describes Sternberg's theory on how people think. The next three chapters focus on the learning and development of critical thinking and reasoning. Chapters 10 to 12 focus on the teaching (...) of critical thinking, and Chapters 14 though 16 focus on the assessment of critical thinking. The epilogue discusses neglected issues in critical thinking. (shrink)

Argument evaluation, the ability to separate prior belief from evaluation of the quality of an argument, is an essential element of critical thinking. The present study examined the ability of three personality traits (dogmatism, openness to experience, and open-mindedness) to predict argument evaluation quality and belief bias. One hundred and twelve undergraduate students completed the Argument Evaluation Test (Stanovich & West, 1997), measures of Dogmatism, Open-Mindedness, Openness to Experience, and a Vocabulary test. Argument Evaluation Quality was negatively related to Dogmatism, (...) and positively related to Openness to Experience and Vocabulary. Path analysis showed that, when controlling for Vocabulary, Dogmatism was the only personality variable that significantly (negatively) predicted Argument Evaluation Quality. None of the variables in our study were related to belief bias. Implications for future research and educational practice are discussed. (shrink)