Abstract
The construct of metacognition is well-established in psychology and education disciplines, yet much is still unknown. One method receiving well-deserved popularity is by using confidence ratings assigned immediately after a cognitive act to study regulative aspects of metacognition. Prior research has demonstrated evidence of the stable and reliable construct of self-confidence in adults. However, no studies examined the existence of self-confidence among primary school children and its predictive validity within a school environment. In this chapter we present the results of a study that examined the existence of self-confidence in children aged 9–12 years (N = 183). The students also completed a brief-current form of the Parental Bonding Instrument to gauge their perceptions of the level of parental care and overprotection, within the parent-child relationship. Standardised school grades and fluid intelligence scores were also collected. The results from this study demonstrated the existence of self-confidence in primary school children and determined its importance for school achievement, irrespective of a student’s cognitive ability, age and gender. The results also suggest that parental care has an important influence on both school achievement and levels of confidence.
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Notes
- 1.
Moore and Healy ( 2008) provide a comprehensive review of different types of confidence judgments, such as unique confidence judgments that people provide immediately after responding to a test’s item, and general ratings of one’s state of knowledge/performance in comparison to the others. Immediate confidence judgments could be given in two broad formats: (a) in terms of unique probabilistic numbers along a “confidence scale” or/and as a verbal category along a typical Likert-type scale (e.g., ranging from “unsure” to “very sure”) and (b) as confidence intervals asking participants to estimate for instance 90% confidence intervals around their answers. The former judgments are more prevalent than the latter, comprising 64% of research on knowledge calibration (Moore & Healy, 2008), and in a series of studies were demonstrated to reflect a thought level higher than knowledge – the metacognitive level – within the taxonomy of cognitive/metacognitive analysis (Kleitman, 2008 ). The confidence judgments of the first broad format are at the focus of this chapter.
- 2.
The Horn-Cattell theory is a hierarchical model that defines intelligence in terms of independent broad abilities (Carroll, 1993). According to the model, fluid intelligence (Gf) reflects basic abilities in reasoning, while crystallized intelligence (Gc ) reflects the effects of acculturation. The model regards Gf and Gc as second-order factors, while g refers to a general intelligence, a higher-order factor (Horn & Noll, 1994).
- 3.
If self-confidence is an intrinsic trait, thus, similar to personality and intelligence, it is a more stable characteristic than academic achievements at a given time.
- 4.
Schools within the same region were asked to participate in order to control for socioeconomic status (SES). Additionally, to control for fluency in English, schools with a high enrolment of NESB (Non-English Speaking Background) students were not approached to participate.
- 5.
No prior research has established additional time needed to incorporate confidence scores. Thus, although the RPM test has time limits to enable the inclusion of confidence ratings in the test, they were not applied. Consequently, the norms of the test were not applicable.
- 6.
The copies of the response categories for 6- and 8-point confidence rating scales are available from the first author.
- 7.
Over-/Underconfidence Bias score is a difference between mean of confidence ratings and percentage of correct responses across all test items. Overconfidence is reflected via a positive bias and underconfidence is reflected by a negative bias. Confidence judgments are considered to be more realistic when the bias score approaches zero. As a rule of thumb, if the bias score lies within a ±5 limit, it is assumed to have little psychological significance and is argued to reflect a reasonably good calibration (Stankov, 1999).
- 8.
Results of CFA models performed on each grade are available on request.
- 9.
The unstandardised estimates are available on request.
- 10.
This is a recommended procedure for complex models examined on a relatively small sample size as it maximises degrees of freedom without affecting the model parameters of fit indices (Byrne, 2001).
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Kleitman, S., Moscrop, T. (2010). Self-Confidence and Academic Achievements in Primary-School Children: Their Relationships and Links to Parental Bonds, Intelligence, Age, and Gender. In: Efklides, A., Misailidi, P. (eds) Trends and Prospects in Metacognition Research. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4419-6546-2_14
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