Proactive and Reactive Processes in Cognitive Control in Adolescence

• In Event: 3-030 - Reward and Cognition Interactions in Adolescence and Emerging Adulthood

Integrative Statement

The Dual Mechanisms of Control framework distinguishes between two temporally distinct cognitive control recruitment strategies (Braver, 2012). Proactive control refers to the sustained maintenance of goal-relevant information in anticipation of a cue. Reactive control refers to the transient reactivation of goals in response to a cue, and is less demanding than proactive control, but more susceptible to interference. Adults have the capacity to adapt to contextual demands by flexibly engaging the most efficient mode of cognitive control, as evidenced by changes in response to experimental manipulations. In two fMRI studies, we investigated whether adolescents exhibit a similar ability using a working memory task with intermittent rewards and a prospective memory task with cues of varying salience. We expected (1) adolescents to exhibit a more reactive strategy and (2) adolescents’ working memory to be more strongly modulated by a rewarding context, and adolescents’ prospective memory to be more challenged by a low salience cue.

We studied developmental changes and stabilities in proactive and reactive control in retrospective and prospective memory, with manipulations of the context in terms of rewards and salience. We employed a mixed blocked and event-related functional magnetic resonance imaging design enabled separation of transient and sustained neural activity associated with reactive and proactive cognitive control.

For study 1, we compared changes in performance in a letter-array working memory task as a function of reward in 30 typically developing adolescents (12-16 years) and 20 adults (23-30 years). After a baseline block without rewards, participants performed the task in a block in which they expected some trials (50%) to be monetarily rewarded. Whether a reward could be obtained on a given trial or not was indicated before the presentation of the working memory array on each trial. Reward and performance feedback was provided after each trial. For study 2, we compared changes in prospective memory performance as a function of cue salience in the same sample. In the ongoing task, participants had to indicate the relative position of a triangle compared to another shape. In a small percentage of trials (PM task), participants had to remember to press a different key if both shapes were the same color (salient cue condition) or one chess knight move away (non-salient cue condition).

Across studies, there was some evidence for general improvements of performance with age in both prospective and working memory. However, both age groups responded in a similar fashion to contextual manipulations. In study 1, rewards enhanced working memory for both adolescents and adults. In study 2, non-salient cues similarly challenged prospective memory performance for both age groups. There were few differences in task-driven haemodynamic brain changes between adolescence and adulthood. Across age groups, there was evidence of dissociable sustained and transient activation in frontoparietal regions, and a mixed pattern of response in the anterior insula. These neural changes support the sustained and anticipatory maintenance of task sets across blocks, and transient trial-level corrections which underlie performance in prospective and working memory tasks. Our results show that both adolescents and adults can bias control strategies in response to contextual manipulations.

Authors

• Lucia Ines Magis Weinberg, UC Berkeley; UC London
  Presenting Author

• Ruud Custers, UC London; Utrecht University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Iroise Dumontheil, University of London
  Non-Presenting Author