Development of strategic motor behavior during value-guided actions across adolescence and adulthood: An ERP investigation

Successful navigation of real-life environment requires flexible titration of effort based on the possible rewards. Here, we investigate how the flexibility of effort allocation develops throughout adolescence by studying the neural underpinnings of reward-maximizing strategies during a value-guided action. When faced with a task environment with varying rewards and their expectancy, do adolescents use an adult-like strategy but with reduced efficiency due to their cognitive immaturity, or do they use qualitatively different strategies to overcome the cognitive immaturity and to maximize the earned reward? Using EEG with a novel analytic technique that separately quantifies motor preparation and execution efforts, we demonstrate evidence for the latter. While adults (21 years and above) showed flexibility in allocating preparation and execution efforts within a trial based on reward and its expectancy, pre-adolescents’ (10-12 years) motor efforts demonstrated insufficient flexibility and limited use of those trial parameters, reflecting their cognitive immaturity. Meanwhile, adolescents (13-20 years) allocated motor efforts more equally regardless of the trial parameters. These manifested differences represent distinct reward-maximizing strategies across development that are shaped by cognitive maturity, which reflects an individual’s endeavor to maximize adaptive fit in the dynamics of real-life environment. notReviewed other