The Effects of Mastery and Competitive Conditions on Self‐Assessment at Different Ages

It was hypothesized that self‐evaluative accuracy will increase with age in a competitive condition, while even young children will appraise their performance quite accurately in a mastery condition. Children at ages 5, 7, and 10 working in either a match‐the‐standard or a competitive condition copied a drawing and then evaluated their copies. As hypothesized, competing 5‐year‐olds overestimated the quality of their copies, and self‐assessments became less positive and better correlated with adult judgments with age. There were no age differences in self‐evaluative accuracy in the mastery condition. Examination of children's explanations for their ratings and their interest in the task supported the interpretation that young children are guided by a nonnormative concept of ability, which can lead to overoptimistic perceptions of competence under competition. Older children tended to adopt normative goals and criteria for self‐assessment in competition and mastery ones in the match the standard condition, and were realistic about their performance in both.