The metacognitive abilities of children and adults

•Signal detection theory model analysis was used to distinguish metacognitive ability from the propensity towards risk taking.•For the first time the exact same metacognitive task was used to evaluate children and adults.•Children have a higher tendency to overestimate their performance than adults; however, metacognitive ability extracted through the model from confidence judgments is similar in 6–8 years old and adults.•There is a marked difference in the decision criterion between adults and children; while both tend to be suboptimally overconfident, this tendency is exacerbated in children.