Investigating Adolescent Discourse in Critical Thinking: Monologic Responses to Stories Containing a Moral Dilemma

Purpose The adolescent developmental task of establishing autonomy from parents is supported through various aspects executive functioning, including critical thinking. Our aim was to investigate younger and older language performance in form, content, use response a moral dilemma task. Method Forty-four typically developing adolescents completed sampling task, responding stories that contained for one the characters. Two age groups participated: ( n = 24, 12;2–13;11 [years;months]) 20, 16;1–17;11). Participants produced monologue an open-ended question prompt. Responses were transcribed analyzed discourse production on measures form (verbal productivity syntactic complexity) content (semantic diversity word percentages three semantic domains: affective, social, cognitive). Language evaluated using coding system based Bloom's revised taxonomy Results There no significant group differences complexity diversity. Significant found adolescents' taxonomy. demonstrated significantly higher proportion utterances at Level 1 (remembering understanding) compared adolescents, while 3 (evaluating creating). Conclusions effective demonstrating growth skills results highlight clinical utility engaging involving thinking, whereas associated scheme, may differentiate levels thinking provide direction intervention.