Developmental Changes in Adaptive Behavior during Adolescence: The Interplay between Motivational and Cognitive Control Functioning

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Recent neuroscientific models on cognitive development postulate a differential maturation of brain structures that have been associated with motivational/emotional processes (subcortical structures), on the one hand, and cognitive control processes (cortical structures), on the other hand. Subcortical structures are assumed to mature earlier than cortical structures, resulting in a higher sensitivity towards positive cues and feedback (incentives) during adolescence, which can in turn result in more risky behavioral decisions. The aim of the planned research proposal is to examine developmental changes in the interplay between motivational/emotional processes and cognitive control processes for the adaptive regulation of behavior. We intend to investigate developmental changes by means of a combined cross-sectional and longitudinal research design, in which four age groups (10-11 years; 12-13 years, 14-15 years und 16-17 years) will be assessed at two measurement times separated by about two years. Adaptive behavioral adjustment will be measured by the ability to flexibly switch between task-set instructions (task switching) and by the ability to relearn rules on the basis of feedback (feedback-based reversal learning). The influence of motivational processes will be examined by variations of positive and negative cues indicating gains and losses during task switching and by gains and losses following correct and incorrect responses during the learning task. Aside from behavioral measures, we will use event-related potentials (ERPs) to investigate developmental changes in task-relevant processing during different phases of an action (during processing of the cue, stimulus or feedback). Our main research goals are to determine whether adolescents indeed have a greater bias towards processing positive cues and feedback information in comparison to children and young adults and how the development of adaptive behavior is modulated by motivational factors. In addition, we plan to include a number of standardized psychometric and cognitive tasks to examine the relative contribution of individual differences in cognitive and motivational control for explaining individual differences in fluid intelligence as well as their changes.