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Incentive motivation improves numerosity discrimination in children and adolescents
Luca Spliethoff1,2, Shu-Chen Li1,3, Annika Dix4,5,6
1Faculty of Psychology, Chair of Lifespan Developmental Neuroscience, Technische Universität Dresden, Zellescher Weg 17, 01062, Dresden, Germany.
Scientific Reports
|June 17, 2022
Summary
Monetary rewards enhance number sense precision in children and adolescents by increasing the salience of numerical information. This suggests that incentive motivation supports cognitive development in younger populations.
Area of Science:
- Cognitive Development
- Neuroscience
- Behavioral Economics
Background:
- Incentive motivation enhances the precision of the Approximate Number System (ANS) in adults.
- Understanding the developmental trajectory of incentive motivation is crucial for cognitive science.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate if incentive motivation improves numerical precision in children and adolescents.
- To explore the underlying neural and cognitive mechanisms in younger samples.
Main Methods:
- A dot comparison task with monetary incentives was administered to 7-year-old children and 14-year-old adolescents.
- Behavioral data were analyzed using the EZ-diffusion model, and pupillometry measured salience network activation.
Main Results:
- Both age groups exhibited improved accuracy and processing efficiency under reward conditions.
- Phasic pupil dilations, indicating salience network activation, were greater in incentivized trials.
- Reward anticipation effects were less pronounced in children than adolescents, and decision thresholds were not elevated.
Conclusions:
- Incentive modulation enhances numerosity discrimination in children and adolescents by increasing perceptual saliency.
- Developmental differences exist in reward anticipation and the regulation of response caution.
