The development of anticipatory cognitive control processes in task‐switching: An ERP study in children, adolescents, and young adults

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Abstract
To investigate the development of advance task‐set updating and reconfiguration, behavioral and event‐related potential (ERP) data were recorded in children (9–10 years), adolescents (13–14 years), and young adults (20–27 years) in a cued task‐switching paradigm. In pure blocks, the same task was repeated. In mixed blocks, comprised of stay and switch trials, two tasks were intermixed. Age differences were found for stay‐pure performance (mixing costs) in the 600‐ms but not in the 1200‐ms cue‐target interval (CTI). Children showed larger reaction time mixing costs than adults. The ERPs suggested that the larger costs were due to delayed anticipatory task‐set updating in children. Switch‐stay performance decrements (switch costs) were age‐invariant in both CTIs. However, ERP data suggested that children reconfigured the task‐set on some stay trials, rather than only on switch trials, suggesting the continued maturation of task‐set reconfiguration processes.

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