The benefits of youth

Bjorklund, David F.; Periss, Virginia; Causey, Kayla

doi:10.1080/17405620802602334

Cited by 22 publications

(11 citation statements)

References 66 publications

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“…The present study, however, extended results on DEVELOPMENTAL DIFFERENCES IN OVERCONFIDENCE 24 overconfidence to the classroom, for which groups of children were tested with a more complex and more educationally valid learning task. There has been debate about whether overconfidence is harmful for children; the adaptivity hypothesis states that a slight degree of overconfidence can be beneficial for learning because it motivates children to persist in a task (Shin et al, 2007;Bjorklund, Periss, & Causey, 2009). However, in educational settings, children's overconfidence is likely to be harmful as it leads to ineffective control of study (Dunlosky & Rawson, 2012).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Why are children overconfident? Developmental differences in the implementation of accessibility cues when judging concept learning

Loon

Bruin

Leppink

et al. 2017

Journal of Experimental Child Psychology

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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.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Why are children overconfident? Developmental differences in the implementation of accessibility cues when judging concept learning

Loon

Bruin

Leppink

et al. 2017

Journal of Experimental Child Psychology

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show abstract

“…Moreover, to the extent that psychological traits of children represent not just immature, underdeveloped phenotypic stages necessary to reach the adaptive mature target stage, but also in many cases ontogenetically-based, stage-specific adaptations that change in qualitative form as development proceeds [17,126,127], retention of relatively ‘early-development’ traits in autism will necessarily involve some mixture of cognitive enhancements and deficits, as abundantly observed in this literature.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Developmental heterochrony and the evolution of autistic perception, cognition and behavior

Crespi

2013

BMC Med

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BackgroundAutism is usually conceptualized as a disorder or disease that involves fundamentally abnormal neurodevelopment. In the present work, the hypothesis that a suite of core autism-related traits may commonly represent simple delays or non-completion of typical childhood developmental trajectories is evaluated.DiscussionA comprehensive review of the literature indicates that, with regard to the four phenotypes of (1) restricted interests and repetitive behavior, (2) short-range and long-range structural and functional brain connectivity, (3) global and local visual perception and processing, and (4) the presence of absolute pitch, the differences between autistic individuals and typically developing individuals closely parallel the differences between younger and older children.SummaryThe results of this study are concordant with a model of ‘developmental heterochrony’, and suggest that evolutionary extension of child development along the human lineage has potentiated and structured genetic risk for autism and the expression of autistic perception, cognition and behavior.

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“…With respect to overestimating one's own abilities, young children are the optimists of the world, believing they possess greater abilities, qualities, and performance than an objective assessment would suggest. Rather than reflecting a metacognitive deficit, for young children in some contexts, it is associated with higher verbal IQ and enhanced performance on later trials of cognitive tasks (see Bjorklund, Periss, & Causey, for a review). Young children's overly optimistic assessments of their own abilities presumably enhance their self‐efficacy (Bandura, ), causing them to persist on tasks and in situations where a child with a more accurate evaluation of his or her performance might quit.…”

Section: Distal Biological Causation: Evolutionary Perspectives On Comentioning

confidence: 99%

A Metatheory for Cognitive Development (or “Piaget is Dead” Revisited)

Bjorklund

2018

Child Development

Self Cite

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In 1997, I argued that with the loss of Piaget's theory as an overarching guide, cognitive development had become disjointed and a new metatheory was needed to unify the field. I suggested developmental biology, particularly evolutionary theory, as a candidate. Here, I examine the increasing emphasis of biology in cognitive development research over the past 2 decades. I describe briefly the emergence of evolutionary developmental psychology and examine areas in which proximal and distal biological causation have been particularly influential. I argue that developmental biology will continue to increasingly influence research and theory in cognitive development and that evolutionary theory is well on its way to becoming a metatheory, not just for cognitive development, but for developmental psychology generally.

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The benefits of youth

Cited by 22 publications

References 66 publications

Why are children overconfident? Developmental differences in the implementation of accessibility cues when judging concept learning

Why are children overconfident? Developmental differences in the implementation of accessibility cues when judging concept learning

Developmental heterochrony and the evolution of autistic perception, cognition and behavior

A Metatheory for Cognitive Development (or “Piaget is Dead” Revisited)

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