title: The effects of mastery and competitive conditions on self-assessment at different ages.
abstract: It was hypothesized that self-evaluative accuracy will increase with age in a competitive condition, while even young children will appraise their performance quite accurately in a mastery condition. Children at ages 5, 7, and 10 working in either a match-the-standard or a competitive condition copied a drawing and then evaluated their copies. As hypothesized, competing 5-year-olds overestimated the quality of their copies, and self-assessments became less positive and better correlated with adult judgments with age. There were no age differences in self-evaluative accuracy in the mastery condition. Examination of children's explanations for their ratings and their interest in the task supported the interpretation that young children are guided by a nonnormative concept of ability, which can lead to overoptimistic perceptions of competence under competition. Older children tended to adopt normative goals and criteria for self-assessment in competition and mastery ones in the match the standard condition, and were realistic about their performance in both.
authors.affiliation: University of Pennsylvania.
authors.forename: R
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Butler
mesh_terms: D001076:Aptitude; D001154:Art; D002648:Child; D002657:Child Development; D002675:Child, Preschool; D003163:Competitive Behavior; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D011597:Psychomotor Performance; D012649:Self Concept