CRITICAL THINKING AND HIGH INTELLECTUAL ABILITY IN ADOLESCENTS: A NECESSARY RELATIONSHIP?

Abstract

The objective of this study was to analyze the relationship between critical thinking (CT) and high intellectual ability, as estimated by performance on the Raven’s Progressive Matrices Test (General Scale), among high school students. A quantitative, ex post facto, cross-sectional correlational design was used. The sample consisted of 61 students from a public high school in Cuernavaca, Morelos, classified into two groups based on their performance on the PMT (Raven & Court, 2006). Critical thinking was assessed using the short version of the PENCRISAL (Saiz et al., 2021), which measures general and practical reasoning skills. The results showed positive and significant correlations of moderate magnitude between intellectual ability estimated from the TMP and most critical thinking skills, with the exception of fallacy detection. Furthermore, significant differences were found between the groups, favoring the group with higher TMP performance, across various skills and in the factors of general reasoning, practical reasoning, and total critical thinking. However, overall performance in critical thinking was low in both groups. It is concluded that high intellectual ability is associated with critical thinking, but is not sufficient to guarantee its development.