Review
Neural Perspectives on Cognitive Control Development during Childhood and Adolescence

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Trends

Developmental patterns of activation in PFC in response to cognitive control tasks have shown a remarkable and unexplained heterogeneity.

Conventional classifications of cognitive control (i.e., basic versus complex) can be extended to rule-based versus internalized processes.

Novel classifications of cognitive control can offer a new perspective for accounting for specific developmental patterns of findings.

Since the discovery that patients with damage to the prefrontal cortex (PFC) show similar deficits in cognitive control as young children, the PFC model of cognitive control development has been a popular description of how cognitive control emerges over time. In this review, we show that not only do many studies support this model, but also that more specific models of PFC development can be formulated, according to the functional roles of subregions and by taking into account the distinctions within ventral–dorsal and lateral–medial PFC. We also reveal that the functional development of dorsolateral PFC supports the development of deliberative processes, whereas that of the medial PFC supports the development of internalized decisions. These new conceptualizations may provide better descriptions of the complexity of cognitive control development.

Section snippets

The Prefrontal Cortex Hypothesis of Cognitive Control Development

Cognitive control refers to the ability to control our thoughts and actions for the purpose of future goals. Over the past decades, a wealth of results has shown that the ability to exert cognitive control increases from early childhood to late adolescence 1, 2. These improvements can be observed across a range of tasks, such as working memory, inhibition, and making complex decisions between options varying in their associated costs and benefits 2, 3. A key question is how different cognitive

A Hierarchical Representation (Basic to Complex) of Cognitive Control

Researchers often conceptualize cognitive control by dividing it into several subprocesses 33, 34. This approach is based on the assumption that cognitive control is an umbrella term for several different executive functions. The basic executive functions comprise working memory, inhibition, cognitive flexibility, and error monitoring [1], which are thought to be supported by different underlying neural regions within the PFC, and each have separate developmental time courses [9]. These

Rule-Based versus Internalized Cognitive Control

An alternative way in which cognitive control processes can be distinguished is based on the extent to which the processes are rule-based or internalized decision processes. With rule-based processes, we refer to the cognitive processes that rely on specific predefined rules or instructions. By contrast, internalized processes refer to those decisions where there is no specific instruction, and choices are based on internal deliberations. Examples of internal deliberations are ‘deciding to

Connectivity and Functional Specialization of Prefrontal Cortical Regions

It would be simplistic to assume that there is a general maturational pattern, driven by a predetermined maturational time course across childhood and adolescence, of such a large and heterogeneous brain area as the PFC. Behavioral developmental studies also consistently show that not all cognitive control functions develop at the same pace. It is more likely that developmental changes, especially in higher-level cognitive skills, result from interactive specialization within the PFC and its

Concluding Remarks and Future Directions

Here, we have explored new ways of categorizing developmental progressions in cognitive control during childhood and adolescence. We have argued that neural activity patterns provide insight into how children and adolescents perform tasks, thereby informing the formulation of more sophisticated models of cognitive control development.

By starting with a basic–complex model 29, 43, 44, we showed that behavioral performance on tasks that rely on complex deliberative processing has a more

Acknowledgments

This work was supported by The Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research (NWO-VICI 453-14-001 E.A.C.) and an innovative ideas grant of the European Research Council (ERC CoG PROSOCIAL 681632 to E.A.C.). The work by N.S. was supported by an innovative ideas grant of the European Research Council (ERC-2016-StG DEVBRAINTRAIN 715282) and a Jacobs Foundation Early-Career Researcher Fellowship. We thank Berna Guroglu for helpful discussions and commenting on earlier versions, and Sibel

Glossary

Delay discounting
the monotonic decline in reward value with an increased time delay of its receipt (i.e., choice outcomes are reweighted to take the delay into account).
Interference control
the suppression of responses that are triggered by competing events and responses.
Latent class models
models that rely on a statistical method for identifying unmeasured class membership among observed variables.
Latent variables
variables that are not directly observed but can be inferred through a mathematical

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