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Differentiation of the number and content of competence dimensions
The basic premise of this concept is that as children age, they are better able to recognize different areas, or domains, of their lives (athletics, academics, relationships, etc.: Figure 1) in which they can have different levels of competence (Stipek & Mac Iver, 1989). Typically, in the middle to late childhood stage, their cognitive development is such that they become able to differentiate not only between domains (e.g., I am okay in school, but am very good at sports), but within subdomains (e.g., I am a better baseball player than basketball player).
Further, differentiation offers the ability to make higher-order judgments of competence without an all-or-nothing judgment about the child's global self-worth (e.g., I am a good basketball player, even though I do not defend very well) (Fischer, 1980). Much of this ability is due to the demonstration of more realistic personal evaluations (Harter, 1982; Harter & Pike, 1984) which we will cover in the next section.