Does the Cognitive Reflection Test actually capture heuristic versus analytic reasoning styles in older adults?

Increased reliance on heuristic thinking in mild cognitive impairment

Reasoning can be fast, automatic, and intuitive or slow, deliberate, and analytical. Use of one cognitive reasoning style over the other has broad implications for beliefs, but differences in cognitive style have not previously been reported in those with mild cognitive impairment (MCI). Here, the cognitive reflection test is used to measure cognitive style in healthy older adults and those with MCI. Those with MCI performed worse than cognitively healthy older adults, indicating they are more likely to engage in intuitive thinking than age-matched adults. This association is reliable after controlling for additional cognitive, self-report, and demographic factors. Across all measures, subjective cognitive decline was the best predictor of cognitive status. A difference in cognitive style represents a novel behavioral marker of MCI, and future work should explore whether this explains a broader pattern of reasoning errors in those with MCI, such as susceptibility to scams or impaired financial reasoning.

Who Gets Caught in the Web of Lies?: Understanding Susceptibility to Phishing Emails, Fake News Headlines, and Scam Text Messages

OBJECTIVE

The present study investigated if the same users are vulnerable to phishing emails, scam text messages, and fake news headlines and if there are universal predictors of susceptibility for all three tasks.

BACKGROUND

Theoretical research provides support for the notion that the same users likely fall for multiple forms of online deception. However, no research has directly compared susceptibility for various online deceptions (eg phishing, disinformation, scam text messages) within the same group of users.

METHOD

Participants completed an online survey consisting of demographic questions, the Cognitive Reflection Test (ie impulsivity), and the Digital Literacy Scale, and classified 90 legitimate and deceptive emails, text messages, and news headlines.

RESULTS

Results suggest that individuals who struggle to discriminate between deceptive and legitimate stimuli on one task experience similar difficulties on the other two tasks. Additionally, while lower levels of digital literacy and cognitive reflectiveness predicted poorer discrimination abilities across all three tasks, age did not predict performance. Interestingly, participants appeared to be the most susceptible to phishing emails.

CONCLUSION

Overall, individuals who fall for one form of online deception appear to be more likely to fall for other forms of deception, and digital literacy and cognitive reflectiveness can predict widespread vulnerability to online deception.

APPLICATION

Organizations may be able to identify potential vulnerabilities for a variety of online attacks by measuring digital literacy, cognitive reflectiveness, and performance in one online deception task. Additionally, training interventions may be the most needed for phishing emails.

Impulsivity and Reflective Thinking in Veterans Seeking Care for Substance Use Disorder

Objective: Substance use disorder (SUD) is a major public health crisis, with increased overdose deaths in the past decade. This has coincided with a tremendous amount of research on those who misuse substances. However, extensive research on SUD vulnerability characteristics such as impulsivity may be complemented by research on theoretically relevant aspects of cognition. The Cognitive Reflection Test (CRT) was designed to measure a person's ability to subdue quick, intuitive decisions to reflect or deliberate. To some decision making theorists, this measure may help explain why some people are better able to inhibit "gut reactions" than others. Methods: We recruited 140 veterans from a Veterans Affairs medical center; 91 of whom were receiving SUD treatment. Participants completed the CRT and a measure of trait impulsivity (the UPPS-P). We ran planned ANCOVAs assessing differences in the number of correct answers on the CRT and the proportion of errors that were intuitive. Results: Participants who were receiving treatment gave significantly fewer correct, reflective answers on the CRT compared to controls. However, there were no significant differences in the proportion of errors that were due to intuitive responses. These findings did not change when controlling for age and/or trait impulsivity. Conclusion: Those suffering from SUD may exhibit cognitive deficits that do not stem from intuitive thinking. These deficits may, in turn, exacerbate issues arising from elevated impulsivity. Additional research which better incorporates decision making theory may be invaluable in providing clinically-relevant results and positive public health outcomes.

Testing the Foreign Language Effect on Cognitive Reflection in Older Adults

An increasing number of people around the world communicate in more than one language, resulting in them having to make decisions in a foreign language on a daily basis. Interestingly, a burgeoning body of literature suggests that people’s decision-making is affected by whether they are reasoning in their native language (NL) or their foreign language (FL). According to the foreign language effect (FLe), people are less susceptible to bias in many decision-making tasks and more likely to display utilitarian cost-benefit analysis in moral decision-making when reasoning in a FL. While these differences have often been attributed to a reduced emotionality in the FL, an emerging body of literature has started to test the extent to which these could be attributable to increased deliberation in the FL. The present study tests whether increased deliberation leads to a FLe on cognitive reflection in a population of older adults (M_age = 65.1), from the successful aging project in Umeå, Sweden. We explored whether performance on a 6-item version of the cognitive reflection test (CRT) adapted to Swedish would differ between participants for whom Swedish was their NL and those for whom Swedish was their FL. The CRT is a task designed to elicit an incorrect, intuitive answer. In order to override the intuitive answer, one requires engaging in deliberative, analytical thinking to determine the correct answer. Therefore, we hypothesized that if thinking in a FL increases deliberation, then those performing the task in their FL would exhibit higher accuracy rates than those performing in their NL. Our results showed that age and level of education predicted performance on the task but performance on the CRT did not differ between the NL and the FL groups. In addition, in the FL group, proficiency in the FL was not related to performance in the CRT. Our results, therefore, do not provide evidence that thinking in a FL increases deliberation in a group of older adults performing a logical reasoning task that is not typically associated with an emotional connotation.

Dunning-Kruger Effect: Intuitive Errors Predict Overconfidence on the Cognitive Reflection Test

The Cognitive Reflection Test (CRT) is a measure of analytical reasoning that cues an intuitive but incorrect response that must be rejected for successful performance to be attained. The CRT yields two types of errors: Intuitive errors, which are attributed to Type 1 processes; and non-intuitive errors, which result from poor numeracy skills or deficient reasoning. Past research shows that participants who commit the highest numbers of errors on the CRT overestimate their performance the most, whereas those with the lowest error-rates tend to slightly underestimate. This is an example of the Dunning-Kruger Effect (DKE). The present study examined how intuitive vs. non-intuitive errors contribute to overestimation in the CRT at different levels of performance. Female undergraduate students completed a seven-item CRT test and subsequently estimated their raw score. They also filled out the Faith in Intuition (FI) questionnaire, which is a dispositional measure of intuitive thinking. Data was separated into quartiles based on level of performance on the CRT. The results demonstrated the DKE. Additionally, intuitive and non-intuitive errors predicted miscalibration among low, but not high performers. However, intuitive errors were a stronger predictor of miscalibration. Finally, FI was positively correlated with CRT self-estimates and miscalibration, indicating that participants who perceived themselves to be more intuitive were worse at estimating their score. These results taken together suggest that participants who perform poorly in the CRT and also those who score higher in intuitive thinking disposition are more susceptible to the influences of heuristic-based cues, such as answer fluency, when judging their performance.

Aging in an Era of Fake News

Misinformation causes serious harm, from sowing doubt in modern medicine to inciting violence. Older adults are especially susceptible - they shared the most fake news during the 2016 US election. The most intuitive explanation for this pattern blames cognitive deficits. While older adults forget where they learned information, fluency remains intact and decades of accumulated knowledge helps them evaluate claims. Thus, cognitive declines cannot fully explain older adults' engagement with fake news. Late adulthood also involves social changes, including general trust, difficulty detecting lies, and less emphasis on accuracy when communicating. In addition, older adults are relative newcomers to social media, who may struggle to spot sponsored content or manipulated images. In a post-truth world, interventions should consider older adults' shifting social goals and gaps in their digital literacy.

Syllogistic reasoning reveals reduced bias in people with higher autistic-like traits from the general population

Recent theories of autism have emphasised the cognitive strengths and weaknesses in those with autism, which are also seen to some degree in non-clinical samples with higher autistic-like traits. The dual process theory of autism proposes that people with autism and non-clinical people with a higher degree of autistic-like traits have a propensity to show reduced intuitive processing (automatic and typically faster) alongside enhanced propensity towards deliberative processing (dependent on general cognitive ability and typically slower). This study aimed to further test the dual process theory of autism by investigating syllogistic reasoning (whether a conclusion can be logically deduced from two propositions) in addition to the cognitive reflection test (correct responses to which reflect deliberative processing over-riding intuitive processing) with respect to the degree of autistic-like traits and general cognitive ability in a non-clinical sample of 189 adults. Results showed that higher levels of autistic-like traits were related to lower levels of intuitive processing and higher levels of deliberative processing, which was found across both the syllogistic reasoning and cognitive reflection test measures - over and above the effect of general cognitive ability. The findings are consistent with the dual process theory of autism, and implications for autism are discussed.