This research aims to close the gap in knowledge of self-reported knowledge and overclaiming in children. A questionnaire was developed to measure this in a sample of 897 third grade children. Three perspectives were discussed":" overclaiming as a result of deliberate self-enhancement, a proxy for declarative knowledge, and an indicator of creative engagement. The results of the study showed that individual differences in self-reported knowledge were strongly inflated by overclaiming, and only weakly related to declarative knowledge, similar to findings in adult samples.
We discuss four different perspectives on the phenomenon of overclaiming that have been proposed in the research literature; Overclaiming as a result of a) self-enhancement tendencies, b) as a cognitive bias (e.g., hindsight bias, memory bias), c) as proxy for cognitive abilities, and d) as sign of creative engagement. Moreover, we discuss two different scoring methods for an OCQ (signal detection theory vs. familiarity ratings).