We can imagine certain unpleasant psychiatric symptoms could be connected to inappropriate self-beliefs. Disruptions in metacognition and uncertainty monitoring could be at the heart of psychiatric illnesses like anxiety and depression. Patients with anxiety and depression seem to form inaccurate models of their own abilities, reporting low self-esteem, low self-efficacy, and generally low confidence across a range of domains.^. It may be that these inaccurate self-models are formed because of a problem in how these patients learn from prediction errors – as previous work has already found that certain symptoms (e.g., anxiety) are connected to problems in accurately learning about the stability and volatility in a changing world. By revealing how we form beliefs about what we can do, and how children’s brains might form these differently to adults, we can explore how atypicalities in learning about ourselves could lead to psychiatric symptoms.