117 Received : 26 June 2018, Revised : 25 February 2019 Accepted : 06 March 2019, Online published : 11 April 2019 Effect of Critical Thinking on Cognitive Enhancement Gurpreet Kaur #,* , Soumi Awasthy # , and Usama Ghayas Syed $ # DRDO- Defence Institute of Psychological Research, Delhi-110054, India $ Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur - 208 016, India * E-mail: gurpreetkaur@dipr.drdo.in ABSTRACT Cognitive abilities refer to brain based skills that are required to carry out any task ranging from the simplest to the most complex. Since these skills play a signifcant role in our day to day activities, efforts are being made by researchers for their further enhancement. The objective of the present study was to investigate if these abilities can be enhanced through a training module on critical thinking. Critical thinking involves something more than cognitive skills. Critical thinking is not static but a constantly evolving process and even more crucial in a military environment. This study consists of certain activities which are designed in such a manner that the solution of it can be generated through critical thinking. These activities were administered on 36 participants (20 male, 16 female). Each Participant’s baseline cognitive performance was assessed after which training was given to them in the form of different critical thinking activities followed by post assessment of cognitive abilities. Paired sample t - test was used which showed that There was a signifcant difference in the cognitive performance post critical thinking activities. Keywords: Critical thinking; Cognitive enhancement; Training module Defence Life Science Journal, Vol. 4, No. 2, April 2019, pp. 117-121, DOI : 10.14429/dlsj.4.13201  2019, DESIDOC 1. CRITICAL THINKING Critical thinking has been considered to be very important for success in any profession, be it education, business, medical, engineering or any feld as it provides basis for reasoning to operate in ever changing complex world. Being ‘critical’ in thinking does not imply as to fnding faults in someone but here, it refers to the ‘intellectual capacity’ or to the ‘sense of evaluation or judgment’ and being ‘able to discern’ . Critical thinking, often described as ‘thinking about thinking’, has been defned and interpreted in many different ways. Critical thinking refers to the mental processes, strategies, and representations people use to solve problems, make decisions and learn new concepts . Kenneth Watman defnes critical thinking as a structured process involving reasonable and refective thinking about ideas, concepts and beliefs focused on fnding the truth . Critical thinking, one’s ability to judge anything from various angles, consists of six cognitive skills: interpretation, analysis, evaluation, inference, explanation, and self-regulation . In our day to day instances, we are often confronted with the situations where we need to interpret, analyze, evaluate and make inferences about the information. Critical thinking helps in interpreting information and making better decision about our actions . Usually, whenever we are faced with questions that require answering what, when, where and why, we are engaged in critical thinking. Usage of critical thinking increases the likelihood of desirable outcomes. Therefore, identifcation of ways or activities that would enhance critical thinking adds more to effective performance. Critical thinking has an immense signifcance in military operations. Lack of critical thinking can have severe implications in the form of poor judgment, poor decision making and consequently, away from problem solving. In a military situation, it is all the more important to think critically as the situations are very direct and sudden which requires immediate action. Hence, it was felt by the military offcials to have training for the soldiers in critical thinking to enhance their cognitive functioning. Thus need to develop a training module on critical thinking was put forth by the military forces personnel. Critical thinking was operationally defned in the present context as an active goal directed process of analyzing and synthesizing the given information using reasoning and careful observation of the cues present in the environment. Taking this into consideration, a training module consisting of various critical thinking activities has been developed. Some of the activities that have been included in the training module are Uchida-Kraeplin psycho diagnostic test, what happened next in the story, hypothetical scenarios, attending to details, the name game, the endless questions and juxtaposed pair (some of them have been explained in Appendix ‘A’). The activities can be conducted in a group or at the individual level. It is hypothesized that these activities would help in improving critical thinking as well as overall cognitive abilities of the individual.