New research, however, suggests that this apparent learning advantage may be a statistical illusion. “Parents and educators should be cautious about assuming that inflated confidence will improve children’s learning,” said lead author Mengqi Hu of Beijing Normal University. The idea that overconfidence might aid learning gained traction after a 2007 study found that highly overconfident children showed more favorable performance changes during a memory task. As a result, children with unusually low initial recall scores were more likely to be classified as highly overconfident. “Taken together, these findings suggest that the previously reported learning advantage reflected a methodological artifact rather than a genuine benefit of childhood overconfidence,” Hu said.