Better safe than sorry? A Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience Perspective on Response Selection across the Life-Span
1 RPTU Kaiserslautern-Landau
When individuals are required to select rapidly between conflicting response alternatives, accuracy and efficiency in task performance often varies with their age. Moreover, even comparable aspects of behavioral performance might be based on distinct underlying cognitive processes. In the present investigation, EEG was recorded to identify neural correlates for underlying control mechanismsin young and older adults and children. Consistent with the notion that cognitive control is recruited selectively to meet higher task demands, age differences were evident when participants were required to switch between tasks. Only young adults were able to flexibly adjust their response criteria when asked to focus on either accuracy OR speed, as evident in efficient task preparation and the selective use of reactive control for the most demanding task conditions, starting around 200 ms pre-response. Corresponding ERPs revealed a (left-) frontal activity (pre-response negativity). By contrast, older adults showed difficulties in task preparation, and thus higher overall response conflict, but notably selected correct responses by relying on reactive control processes regardless of task demands at the expense of long RTs. Hence, older adults were unable to relax their strict response criterion and adjust to the current task demands. Finally, despite similar long RTs, children did not achieve the corresponding accuracy: ERPs suggest that cognitive control was not upregulated in children although conflict detection is functionally mature even in young children. The present results illustrate how the temporal resolution of ERPs allows to dissociate the precise mechanisms contributing to task performance in each age group.