Introduction: Children with autism experience difficulties in daily life due to impairments in social functioning and adaptive functioning. These impairments differ from person to person, as autism...Show moreIntroduction: Children with autism experience difficulties in daily life due to impairments in social functioning and adaptive functioning. These impairments differ from person to person, as autism concerns a spectrum of symptoms. As metacognition (the ability to monitor and control one’s own thought processes) is said to be related to executive functioning and social cognition, impairments in metacognition might explain difficulties in daily functioning of autistic children. Therefore, the relationship between metacognition, emotion recognition and the quality of children with ASD-symptoms was examined. Method: 25 boys and 21 girls between the age of 8-16 (M = 10) from primary- and secondary schools in and around Leiden participated by performing the Thinking Aloud- task (metacognition) and Morphed Face Emotion Recognition Task, as well as completing the Cantril ladder (quality of life. One parent of each participant completed the Social Responsiveness Scale-2 to measure ASD-symptoms. Results: ASD-symptoms did not significantly correlate to metacognition (F(1.39) = 1.911, p = .175, R² = .047). Furthermore, metacognitive skills did not significantly predict emotion recognition skills (,F(1.41) = .073, p = .789, R² = .002). Neither metacognition nor emotion recognition was a significant predictor of the quality of life of children (F(2.40) = .683, p = .511, R² = .033). Conclusion: Due to the small sample, the current findings should be interpreted carefully. However, this study underscores the importance of examining the individual strengths and needs of children to promote their personal development and well-being. Future research within a larger sample should further investigate the role of metacognition in relation to the well-being of children in different contexts to better support pupils according to their neurocognitive strengths and weaknesses. This might not only contribute to the well-being of the individual child, but might also be beneficial for society as a whole.Show less