The Domain Specificity and Generality of Disjunctive Reasoning: Searching for a Generalizable Critical Thinking Skill

The domain specificity and generality of an important critical thinking skill was examined by administering 9 reasoning and decision-making tasks to 125 adults. Optimal performance on all of the tasks required that disjunctive processing strategies—strategies requiring the exhaustive consideration of all of the possible states of the world—be adopted. Performance across these disjunctive reasoning tasks displayed considerable domain specificity, but 5 of the tasks displayed moderate convergence. Cognitive ability was associated with performance on only 3 of 9 tasks. Six of the 9 tasks displayed associations with 1 of 2 cognitive styles that were examined in the multivariate task battery (need for cognition and reflectivity). Performance on the 5 tasks that displayed some domain generality was also more associated with thinking styles than with cognitive ability in several regression analyses.