Every day, people must decide what to spend their time on, weighing the costs and benefits of their effort. But the question of how 5- to 7-year-old children decide what’s worth their energy might feel less obvious.
A new study by Brown researchers found that young children weigh their perceived success on prior difficult tasks to decide whether or not to attempt further challenges. Published in the journal Child Development, the study found that young children’s decisions to attempt challenging tasks may depend on how well they believe they performed previously.
In the experiments, researchers evaluated children’s metacognitive monitoring — the process of how individuals evaluate their own performance. At this age, “children are experiencing and undergoing a…