Department of Psychology, University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, UK.
School of Informatics, University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, UK.
Dev Cogn Neurosci. 2020 Dec;46:100870. doi: 10.1016/j.dcn.2020.100870. Epub 2020 Oct 12.
Age-related progress in cognitive control reflects more frequent engagement of proactive control during childhood. As proactive preparation for an upcoming task is adaptive only when the task can be reliably predicted, progress in proactive control engagement may rely on more efficient use of contextual cue reliability. Developmental progress may also reflect increasing efficiency in how proactive control is engaged, making this control mode more advantageous with age. To address these possibilities, 6-year-olds, 9-year-olds, and adults completed three versions of a cued task-switching paradigm in which contextual cue reliability was manipulated. When contextual cues were reliable (but not unreliable or uninformative), all age groups showed greater pupil dilation and a more pronounced (pre)cue-locked posterior positivity associated with faster response times, suggesting adaptive engagement of proactive task selection. However, adults additionally showed a larger contingent negative variation (CNV) predicting a further reduction in response times with reliable cues, suggesting motor preparation in adults but not children. Thus, early developing use of contextual cue reliability promotes adaptiveness in proactive control engagement from early childhood; yet, less efficient motor preparation in children makes this control mode overall less advantageous in childhood than adulthood.
年龄相关的认知控制进展反映了儿童时期更频繁地主动参与控制。由于主动为即将到来的任务做准备只有在任务可以可靠预测时才具有适应性，因此主动控制参与的进展可能依赖于对上下文线索可靠性的更有效利用。发展进展也可能反映出主动控制的参与效率提高，使得这种控制模式随着年龄的增长更具优势。为了解决这些可能性，6 岁、9 岁和成年人在三种不同的提示任务转换范式中完成了实验，在这些范式中，上下文线索的可靠性被操纵。当上下文线索可靠时（而不可靠或无信息时），所有年龄组的瞳孔扩张更大，与更快的反应时间相关的（预）线索锁定后正性更大，表明主动选择任务的适应性参与。然而，成年人还表现出更大的伴随负变化（CNV），表明在可靠线索下进一步减少反应时间的运动准备，而儿童则没有。因此，早期对上下文线索可靠性的利用促进了儿童期主动控制参与的适应性；然而，儿童的运动准备效率较低，使得这种控制模式在儿童期总体上不如成年期有利。
