Cognitive strategy use as an index of developmental differences in neural responses to feedback

Developmental differences in dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC), anterior cingulate cortex (ACC), and superior parietal cortex (SPC) activation are associated with differences in how children, adolescents, and adults learn from performance feedback in rule-learning tasks (Crone, Zanolie, Leijenhorst, Westenberg, & Rombouts, 2008). Both maturational differences and performance differences can potentially explain variance in functional brain activation. To disentangle those effects, we established strategy differences in the performance of participants on the task of Crone et al. (2008) by the application of latent mixture models (McLachlan & Peel, 2000). We found 4 categorically different strategies, which were divided across age groups. Both adults and adolescents were distributed among all strategy groups except for the worst performing one, whereas children were distributed among all strategy groups except for the best performing one. Strategy use was a mediator and largely explained the relation between age and variance in activation patterns in the DLPFC and the SPC but not in the ACC. These findings are interpreted vis-à-vis age versus performance predictors of brain development.