The ten-penny problem, an old Chinese reasoning illusion problem was first investigated by Li and Zhang (2008), which indicated that only 30％ of the subjects succeeded in solving the problem and resulted highly error rate in the single-entry bookkeeping representation partly. The fact, however, that most of subjects who solved the issue correctly also adopted the single-entry bookkeeping representation strategy was not discussed in their studies. Therefore，it's not appropriate to attribute the highly error rate to the single-entry bookkeeping representation strategy. Based on the above analysis, three studies were conducted and chi-square was adopted for data analysis．In the first study，198 undergraduate students were asked to solve the ten-penny problem and its heterogeneous issue. the reasons for their solutions were required to write down on a booklet．In the second experiment，we changed the presentation of the original problem and the modified issue by means of weakening the statement for studying whether this change can improve their reasoning performance. In the third study, we provided two different cues, one of which was external perceptual cue that embodied by underlining some key statements，and another internal cue required subjects to apply critical thinking skills to read and resolve the original problem and the modified problem in the instruction. The results of three experiments indicated the following：(1) subjects showed as high error rate as on the heterogeneous issue of the ten-penny problem. (2) Weakening the version of the ten-penny problem could significantly improve the correct rate of reasoning. (3) Presenting critical thinking clues could also significantly improve subject's performance on the ten-penny problem. The results supported the hypotheses that the ten-penny problem is a reasoning illusion problem and suggested that the difficulty in solving this problem is partly due to the surface character of the statement of the original problem and partly due to most of subject’s lack of critical thinking skill.