title: Why are children overconfident? Developmental differences in the implementation of accessibility cues when judging concept learning.
abstract: Children are often overconfident when monitoring their learning, which is harmful for effective control and learning. The current study investigated children's (N=167, age range 7-12years) judgments of learning (JOLs) when studying difficult concepts. The main aims were (a) to investigate how JOL accuracy is affected by accessibility cues and (b) to investigate developmental changes in implementing accessibility cues in JOLs. After studying different concepts, children were asked to generate novel sentences and then to make JOLs, select concepts for restudy, and take a final test. Overconfidence for incorrect and incomplete test responses was reduced for older children in comparison with younger children. For older age groups, generating a sentence led to greater overconfidence compared with not being able to generate a sentence, which indicates that older children relied more on accessibility cues when making JOLs. This pattern differed in the youngest age group; younger children were generally overconfident regardless of whether they had generated sentences or not. Overconfidence was disadvantageous for effective control of learning for all age groups. These findings imply that instructions to encourage children to avoid metacognitive illusions need to be adapted to children's developmental stage.
authors.affiliation: Department of Developmental Psychology, Faculty of Psychology, and Swiss Graduate School of Cognition, Learning, and Memory, University of Bern, CH-3012 Bern, Switzerland; Department of Educational Development and Research and School of Health Professions Education, Maastricht University, 6200 MD Maastricht, The Netherlands. Electronic address: mariette.vanloon@psy.unibe.ch.
authors.forename: Mariëtte
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: van Loon
authors.affiliation: Department of Educational Development and Research and School of Health Professions Education, Maastricht University, 6200 MD Maastricht, The Netherlands.
authors.forename: Anique
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: de Bruin
authors.affiliation: Department of Educational Development and Research and School of Health Professions Education, Maastricht University, 6200 MD Maastricht, The Netherlands.
authors.forename: Jimmie
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Leppink
authors.affiliation: Department of Developmental Psychology, Faculty of Psychology, and Swiss Graduate School of Cognition, Learning, and Memory, University of Bern, CH-3012 Bern, Switzerland.
authors.forename: Claudia
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Roebers
mesh_terms: D000367:Age Factors; D001288:Attention; D002648:Child; D003210:Concept Formation; D003463:Cues; D003469:Culture; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007088:Illusions / Q000523:psychology*; D007600:Judgment; D007858:Learning; D011939:Mental Recall; D000067489:Metacognition; D011936:Reality Testing
keywords: Control; Cue use; Development; Metacognition; Monitoring; Overconfidence