Developing Adaptive Control: Age-related Differences in Task Choices and Awareness of Proactive and Reactive Control Demands

Abstract

Developmental changes in executive function are often explained in terms of core cognitive processes and associated neural substrates. For example, younger children tend to engage control reactively in the moment as needed, whereas older children increasingly engage control proactively, in anticipation of needing it. Such developments may reflect increasing capacities for active maintenance dependent upon dorsolateral prefrontal cortex. However, younger children will engage proactive control when reactive control is made more difficult, suggesting that developmental changes may also reflect decisions about whether to engage control, and how. We tested awareness of temporal control demands and associated task choices in 5- and 10-year-olds and adults using a demand selection task. Participants chose between one task that enabled proactive control and another task that enabled reactive control. Adults reported awareness of these different control demands and preferentially played the proactive task option. Ten-year-olds reported awareness of control demands but selected task options at chance. Five-year-olds showed neither awareness nor task preference, but a subsample who exhibited awareness of control demands preferentially played the reactive task option, mirroring their typical control mode. Thus, developmental improvements in executive function may in part reflect better awareness of cognitive demands and adaptive behavior, which may in turn reflect changes in dorsal anterior cingulate in signaling task demands to lateral prefrontal cortex.

Meta-control: From psychology to computational neuroscience

“…Another question addressed in this Special Issue pertains to the development of meta-control across the lifespan: Does the degree to which individuals engage in meta-control change across development and aging (Bolenz et al, 2019;Bolenz & Eppinger, 2020;Ruel, Devine, & Eppinger, 2021)? Niebaum et al (2021) used a demand selection task to study developmental differences in proactive versus reactive engagement of control. The results suggest that greater task performance with age does not just result from an improved ability to engage in proactive control, but also from greater awareness of cognitive demands associated with the task (Niebaum et al, 2021).…”

“…Niebaum et al (2021) used a demand selection task to study developmental differences in proactive versus reactive engagement of control. The results suggest that greater task performance with age does not just result from an improved ability to engage in proactive control, but also from greater awareness of cognitive demands associated with the task (Niebaum et al, 2021). The latter pertains to the monitoring function of meta-control.…”

“…The latter pertains to the monitoring function of meta-control. Age-comparative approaches to meta-control, as explored by Niebaum et al (2021), provide valuable insights into developmental changes in the regulation of cognitive control. However, the work also highlights an asymmetry in the meta-control processes under study: Whereas most of the research in the Special Issue focuses on the regulation of control, few investigate the mechanisms underlying the monitoring of control processes-an important direction for future research.…”

Adaptiveness in proactive control engagement in children and adults

“…Therefore, children may have a higher threshold to engage this control mode. Consistently, when given the choice between versions of the task-switching paradigm in which the cue was presented either ahead of or on target onset, hence encouraging proactive or reactive control, respectively, children either showed no preference or preferred the version allowing reactive control, whereas adults favoured proactive control ( Niebaum et al, 2020 ). Indeed, proactive control development closely relates to working memory development during childhood ( Gonthier et al, 2019 ; Kubota et al, 2020 ; Troller- Renfree et al, 2020), and age-related gains in both proactive control and working memory performance relate to increasing frontostriatal connectivity with age ( Rubia et al, 2006 ; Vink et al, 2014 ).…”

Deciding What to Do: Developments in Children’s Spontaneous Monitoring of Cognitive Demands

“…Young children also do not monitor differences between tasks that vary according to when cognitive control should be engaged. In another demand selection task, one option encouraged proactive engagement of control by showing a sorting rule prior to a stimulus to sort and removing the rule at the onset of the stimulus, whereas the other option showed the sorting rule and stimulus simultaneously, requiring participants to engage control reactively (Niebaum, Chevalier, Guild, & Munakata, in press). Participants of all ages responded more quickly on the proactive option, but 5‐year olds were also more accurate on the reactive option.…”