Children's awareness of their own certainty and understanding of deduction and guessing

We conducted three studies that investigated first through third grade children's ability to identify and remember deductive inference or guessing as the source of a belief, to detect and retain the certainty of a belief generated through inference or guessing and to evaluate another observer's inferences and guesses. Immediately following a deductive inference or guess, first and third grade children rated inferences as more certain than guessing, but following a brief delay, only third grade children rated inferences as more certain than guessing. Children generally were accurate at identifying inference or guessing as the source of their belief, either immediately or after a delay. Rating another observer's deductions as more certain than guesses increased between first and third grade, and among second grade children, was correlated with retention of children's own certainty. Implications of the results for the development of meta‐cognitive knowledge are discussed.