The adaptive nature of children's overestimation in a strategic memory task

Kindergarten, first-, and third-grade children were given a multitrial sort-recall task with different items on each trial. Children were asked to predict how many items they would recall prior to each trial. We classified children into high- and low-overestimation groups based on their prediction accuracy on the first two trials and assessed changes in recall and strategy use over trials (trials 4/5 minus trials 1/2). Following predictions, at all grades, children in the high-overestimation group showed greater gains (or fewer losses) in recall than children in the low-overestimation group. Differences in strategy use over trials were generally nonsignificant. The results were interpreted as reflecting the adaptive nature of children's overestimation of their cognitive abilities.