Ways of Thinking in Children: Development and Initial Validation of a Personality-Centred, Self-Report Instrument

This thesis explored the field of Cognitive Style in relation to children. It reports a summary of the field and concludes that there is a long way to go in our understanding of different ways of thinking in children. Consequently, the aim of the thesis was to develop a robust and psychometrically driven measure to capture thinking preferences as reported by children (7 to 12 years of age). The thesis details the construction of the Ways of Thinking in Children (WOTC) measure, and an initial psychometric validation, employing various statistical approaches. The thesis concludes with a discussion of the implication and application of the WOTC.