Poster #11 - The Mismeasure of Memory: Children Misperceive Their Own Memory Competence

• In Event: 3-206 - Poster Session 13
  In Poster Session: PS 13 Section - Attention, Learning, Memory

Integrative Statement

Self-perception in childhood influences many decisions we make later in life. A particularly influential self-perception is cognitive competence: how cognitively accomplished an individual believes her/himself to be. Although it may seem that a child’s perceived and actual cognitive competence would be positively related, this is not always the case. An especially salient example is math, a domain in which females underestimate their competence (Lauer et al., in press). This can limit their career options later in life and contributes to the gender gap in STEM professions (Heller & Ziegler, 1996). Less is known about how the perception of cognitive competence is related to other areas of cognition, such as memory.
In the present research, we addressed this gap by investigating whether perceived cognitive competence is related to actual cognitive competence in the domain of memory. Participants were 47 6- and 8-year-old children (21 females). Perceived cognitive competence was measured using the Perceived Cognitive-Competence subscale of the Harter Pictoral Scale of Perceived Self-Competence: participants were asked which child was more like them—a more accomplished or less accomplished child. Actual memory competence was measured with two episodic memory tasks. The first was through a Temporal Order task (similar to the NIH Toolbox), in which children were required to order pictures following a demonstration. The second was Narrative Breadth, a measure of the completeness of autobiographical narratives produced in the context of an experimenter-child memory interview (i.e., the number of narrative elements included in the narrative: who, what, where, when, why, action, how description, and how evaluation). In addition, parents filled out a questionnaire measuring their perception of their children’s cognitive competence.
We found that children’s perceived cognitive competence was negatively related to their Narrative Breadth score (r44 =-.35, p =.019, Figure 1). Thus, children who viewed themselves as less cognitively competent had more complete autobiographical narratives. A weaker (non-significant) trend was observed for the Temporal Order score (r41 = -.17). In contrast, parent’s perception of their children’s cognitive competence were positively related to their children’s cognitive performance (Breadth r15=.32, Temporal Order r13= .32).
The results suggest that in the domain of memory, there is a disconnect between how children perceive their cognitive competence and how cognitively competent they actually are. The result is important because disconnects between perceived and actual cognitive competence in children can contribute to detrimental life choices, such as the effect found with females in math and science. Given the centrality of memory to academic achievement, it is a critical domain in which to examine self-perceptions of competence. Further research should continue to investigate how perceived cognitive competence in childhood is related in other cognitive domains and test when such disconnects emerge in order to prevent unfavorable outcomes like gender gaps.

Authors

• Katie Lee, Emory University
  Presenting Author

• Natalie Merrill, Emory University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Marina Larkina, Emory University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Patricia Bauer, Emory University
  Non-Presenting Author