Critical thinking is widely considered an important skill for psychology majors. However, few measures exist of the types of critical thinking that are specific to psychology majors. Lawson (1999) designed the Psychological Critical Thinking Exam (PCTE) to measure students' ability to ''think critically, or evaluate claims, in a way that explicitly incorporates basic principles of psychological science'' (p. 207). However, Lawson's goal was not to present the PCTE as a standardized measure that was ready for use by other departments. We developed an updated version of the PCTE for broader use and investigated its reliability and validity. Results showed very good split-half and test-retest reliability. As expected, senior psychology majors scored significantly higher on the PCTE than junior psychology majors, senior biology majors, senior art majors, and introductory psychology students.

We tested a procedure designed to enhance psychology students' learning from educational videos. Introductory psychology students ( N = 127) watched a video about social psychology during a regular class session. Students in some sections of the course watched the video with no special instructions; students in other sections answered 8 guiding questions in writing while watching the video. After viewing the video, students took a test containing video-related and textbook-related questions. As predicted, students who received guiding questions scored significantly higher on the video-related questions than did those in the control group; there was no effect of experimental condition on students' performance on the textbook-related questions.

Psychological critical thinking involves evaluating claims using the basic principles of psychological science. Because it is such an important skill, psychological critical thinking should be evaluated as part of an overall outcomes assessment for psychology majors. I describe the procedure my institution uses for assessing psychological critical thinking, and I provide evidence that senior psychology majors score higher on our critical thinking test than do either introductory psychology students or seniors majoring in chemistry or biology.

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