Testing sampling bias in estimates of adolescent social competence and behavioral control

Fakkel, Matthijs; Peeters, Margot; Lugtig, Peter; Zondervan‐Zwijnenburg, Mariëlle; Blok, Elisabet; White, Tonya; Meulen, Mara van der; Kevenaar, Sofieke T.; Willemsen, Gonneke; Bartels, Meike; Boomsma, Dorret I.; Schmengler, Heiko; Branje, Susan; Vollebergh, Wilma

doi:10.1016/j.dcn.2020.100872

Cited by 24 publications

(23 citation statements)

References 47 publications

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“…Table 1). We deliberately recruited participants from schools in socially diverse areas with lower socioeconomic status (SES) to counteract the currently overrepresented recruitment bias towards youth with higher SES (Fakkel et al, 2020). The sample size was selected assuming similar, medium to large effect sizes based on previous developmental studies and our own study using a similar task (Bamford & Lagattuta, 2020;Decker et al, 2015Decker et al, , 2016Hauser et al, 2017;Lockhart et al, 2002Lockhart et al, , 2017.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Children are full of optimism, but those rose-tinted glasses are fading – reduced learning from negative outcomes drives hyperoptimism in children

Habicht

Bowler

Me³

et al. 2021

Preprint

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Believing that good things will happen in life is essential to maintain motivation and achieve highly ambitious goals. This optimism bias, the overestimation of positive outcomes, may be particularly important during childhood when motivation must be maintained in the face of negative outcomes. In a learning task, we have thus studied the mechanisms underlying the development of optimism bias. Investigating children (8-9 year-olds), early (12-13 year-olds) and late adolescents (16-17 year-olds), we find a consistent optimism bias across age groups. However, children were particularly hyperoptimistic, with the optimism bias decreasing with age. Using computational modelling, we show that this was driven by a reduced learning from worse-than-expected outcomes, and this reduced learning explains why children are hyperoptimistic. Our findings thus show that insensitivity to bad outcomes in childhood helps to prevent taking on an overly realistic perspective and maintain motivation.

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Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Children are full of optimism, but those rose-tinted glasses are fading – reduced learning from negative outcomes drives hyperoptimism in children

Habicht

Bowler

Me³

et al. 2021

Preprint

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…To counteract the currently dominant recruitment bias towards higher socioeconomic status young people (Fakkel et al, 2020 ), we deliberately selected schools in socially diverse and disadvantaged areas. In participating schools, the proportion of pupils eligible for pupil premium (additional funding for children in local authority care or those known to be eligible for free school meals), with English as an additional language and from minority ethnic backgrounds was above or well above the national average according to Ofsted reports (Office for Standards in Education, 2013‐15).…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

I know better! Emerging metacognition allows adolescents to ignore false advice

Moses‐Payne

Habicht

Bowler

et al. 2021

Developmental Science

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Adolescents aspire for independence. Successful independence means knowing when to rely on one's own knowledge and when to listen to others. A critical prerequisite thus is a well‐developed metacognitive ability to accurately assess the quality of one's own knowledge. Little is known about whether the strive to become an independent decision maker in adolescence is underpinned by the necessary metacognitive skills. Here, we demonstrate that metacognition matures from childhood to adolescence (N = 107) and that this process coincides with greater independent decision‐making. We show that adolescents, in contrast to children, take on others’ advice less often, but only when the advice is misleading. Finally, we demonstrate that adolescents’ reduced reliance on others’ advice is explained by their increased metacognitive skills, suggesting that a developing ability to introspect may support independent decision‐making in adolescence.

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“… Fakkel et al (2020) show that weighing scores for social-economic status (SES) in six CID cohorts did not influence normative estimates of social competence and behavioral control. Fakkel and colleagues carefully weigh this finding against the level of missing data in SES indicators, and against their important finding that in almost all CID cohorts lower SES groups are severely underrepresented.…”

Section: Overviewmentioning

confidence: 99%