equal numbers of made-up titles. This task is
easy to administer to large numbers of children,
it does not make large cognitive demands, and
its results are reliable—it is not possible for
children to distort their responses toward what
they perceive as socially desirable answers.
Because the number of wrong answers can be
counted against correct ones, it is possible to
remove the effects of guessing from the results
(see Cunningham & Stanovich, 1990; 1991; and
Stanovich and West, 1989 for a full description
of these instruments and a discussion of the
logic behind them). The adults’ measures,
named the Author Recognition and Magazine
Recognition Test, have the same task requirements
and are described fully in Stanovich and
West (1989).