title: Predictability and context determine differences in conflict monitoring between adolescence and adulthood.
abstract: The ability to link contextual information to actions is an important aspect of conflict monitoring and response selection. These mechanisms depend on medial prefrontal networks. Although these areas undergo a protracted development from adolescence to adulthood, it has remained elusive how the influence of contextual information on conflict monitoring is modulated between adolescence and adulthood. Using event-related potentials (ERPs) and source localization techniques we show that the ability to link contextual information to actions is altered and that the predictability of upcoming events is an important factor to consider in this context. In adolescents, conflict monitoring functions are not as much modulated by predictability factors as in adults. It seems that adults exhibit a stronger anticipation of upcoming events than adolescents. This results in disadvantages for adults when the upcoming context is not predictable. In adolescents, problems to predict upcoming events therefore turn out to be beneficial. Two cognitive-neurophysiological factors are important for this: The first factor is related to altered conflict monitoring functions associated with modulations of neural activity in the medial frontal cortex. The second factor is related to altered perceptual processing of target stimuli associated with modulations of neural activity in parieto-occipital areas.
authors.affiliation: Cognitive Neurophysiology, Department of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, Faculty of Medicine of the TU, Dresden, Germany. Electronic address: witold.chmielewski@uniklinikum-dresden.de.
authors.forename: Witold X
authors.initials: WX
authors.lastname: Chmielewski
authors.affiliation: Cognitive Neurophysiology, Department of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, Faculty of Medicine of the TU, Dresden, Germany.
authors.forename: Veit
authors.initials: V
authors.lastname: Roessner
authors.affiliation: Cognitive Neurophysiology, Department of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, Faculty of Medicine of the TU, Dresden, Germany.
authors.forename: Christian
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Beste
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D000367:Age Factors; D001288:Attention / Q000502:physiology; D003220:Conflict, Psychological; D003430:Cross-Sectional Studies; D004569:Electroencephalography / Q000379:methods; D005071:Evoked Potentials / Q000502:physiology; D005260:Female; D005625:Frontal Lobe / Q000502:physiology; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D011597:Psychomotor Performance / Q000502:physiology*; D011930:Reaction Time / Q000502:physiology*; D055815:Young Adult
keywords: Conflict monitoring; Contextual effects; Development; EEG; Source localization