ABSTRACT
The objectives of this narrative review were to describe: 1) the concept of self-perception of competence and the relationship with the concept of the self; 2) the characteristic changes in self-perceived competence that occur during childhood using a developmental theoretical perspective as the main reference; 3) the results of studies on the self-perceived competence of boys and girls of different ages. Methods: Studies published in electronic databases, studies identified by manually searching the references of the published studies, and the main theoretical bases of the self-concept in childhood were reviewed. Considering the theoretical basis adopted, self-perception is the judgment of individuals about their own competencies to satisfy the requirements of a task. In childhood, self-perception is an important indicator of the self, since children naturally describe themselves taking the judgment about their own competencies as a parameter. Several cognitive changes and diversity in experiences are observed between 5 and 10 years of age that guide children to move from internal and general parameters in their judgments to external sources of information in the different domains of competence with increasing age. The results of the studies suggest a plateau in the self-perceptions of competence in relation to age and higher self-perception in boys, which result respectively from the lack of experiences to optimize development and from the beliefs of gender-specific roles.
Keywords:
Child Development; Self-Concept; Perceived Competence