Church Jessica A, Bunge Silvia A, Petersen Steven E, Schlaggar Bradley L
Department of Psychology, The University of Texas at Austin, Austin, TX 78712, USA.
Helen Wills Neuroscience Institute.
Cereb Cortex. 2017 Mar 1;27(3):2139-2153. doi: 10.1093/cercor/bhw046.
The ability to engage task control flexibly, especially in anticipation of task demands, is beneficial when juggling different tasks. We investigated whether children in late childhood or early adolescence engaged preparatory task control similar to adults in a trial-wise cued task-switching paradigm. Twenty-eight children (aged 9-15 years) and 30 adults (aged 21-30 years) participated in an fMRI study in which the Cue (preparatory) period across 2 tasks was analyzed separately from the execution of the tasks (the Target period). Children performed more slowly and less accurately than adults, and showed behavioral improvement within the child group age range of 9-15 years. Children exhibited weaker Cue period activation than adults within a number of putative cognitive control regions. In contrast, children exhibited greater activity than adults in several regions, including sensorimotor areas, during the Target period. Children who activated cognitive control-related regions more during the Cue period tended to activate the Target signal age-related regions less, and this correlated with improved accuracy and reaction time on the task, as well as age. The results endorse previous findings that preparatory cognitive control systems are still developing in late childhood, but add new evidence of age-related shifts in activity at the trial level.
在应对不同任务时，尤其是在预期任务需求时灵活运用任务控制的能力是有益的。我们研究了童年晚期或青春期早期的儿童在逐次提示的任务切换范式中是否会像成年人一样进行预备性任务控制。28名儿童（9至15岁）和30名成年人（21至30岁）参与了一项功能磁共振成像（fMRI）研究，其中对两项任务的提示（预备）期与任务执行期（目标期）进行了单独分析。儿童的表现比成年人更慢且准确性更低，并且在9至15岁的儿童组年龄范围内显示出行为改善。在一些假定的认知控制区域内，儿童在提示期的激活比成年人弱。相比之下，在目标期，儿童在包括感觉运动区域在内的几个区域表现出比成年人更强的活动。在提示期更多激活认知控制相关区域的儿童在目标信号年龄相关区域的激活往往较少，这与任务准确性和反应时间的改善以及年龄相关。研究结果支持了之前的发现，即童年晚期预备性认知控制系统仍在发展，但同时也为试验水平上与年龄相关的活动变化增添了新证据。
