Developmental differences in processing the valence and magnitude of incentive cues: Mid-adolescents are more sensitive to potential gains than early- or late-adolescents

Recent research has focused on the interaction between motivation and cognitive control and shown that both are important for goal-directed behavior. There also is evidence for developmental differences in the sensitivity and behavioral effectiveness of incentives, showing that mid-adolescents might be especially susceptible to rewards. Further pursuing this line of research, the present study examined developmental differences in incentive processing and whether these potential differences also would correspond to changes in cognitive control. We compared the processing of high and low potential gains and losses in early-, mid-, and late adolescents by means of event-related potentials (ERPs) and examined whether these incentives also led to specific performance differences in task-switching. We expected that potential gains compared to potential losses and high compared to low incentives would lead to more preparatory updating as reflected in the P3b and consequently to better task performance and smaller global and local switch costs as indicators of cognitive control in all age groups. Furthermore, we expected that mid-adolescents should be especially sensitive to high gains and thus show the most pronounced enhancements in task performance and global and local switch costs in trials with high gains, respectively. Our results corroborate the idea of a special sensitivity to high rewards during mid-adolescence. The analysis of ERPs showed age-related differences in the processing of incentive cues that also varied with cognitive control demands. However, the different incentives did not impact age-related differences in indices of cognitive control, but had a general effect on response speed.