SYSTEMATIC REASONING - FORMAL OR POSTFORMAL COGNITION

The focus of this study was to investigate the relationship between fo rmal and postformal systematic metasystematic reasoning. Shayer's (197 8) chemicals task and a modified version of Kuhn and Brannock's (1977) plant task were used to measure formal thinking- and Commons, Richard , and Kuhn's (1982) multisystem task and balance-beam task to detect p ostformal reasoning. Subjects were university students from the humani ties and social sciences (N = 35). For each subject, a composite score was defined by taking into account the highest score in the tasks mea suring the same developmental stage. Findings indicated that composite scores of formal and postformal reasoning were significantly correlat ed. Results also indicated that full formal operations are not a neces sary condition for systematic thinking. The developmental status of sy stematic reasoning should be defined more strictly than has so far bee n the case. Further studies should focus on metasystematic reasoning a s a possible postformal mode of reasoning. Longitudinal designs are al so required to assess whether metasystematic reasoning develops in adu lthood.