Table 2.

Behavioral and neuroscientific studies examining age differences in cognitive control.

Study	Method	Age groups	Motivational influence	Paradigm	Main results
Di Rosa et al., 2015	Behavioral	20–35 and 48–81 years (and Parkinson patients: 49–85 years)	Monetary rewards (+0.15€) for fast correct responses in a reward block and punishments (-0.15€) for slow and/or incorrect responses in a punishment block	Simon task	• For young adults, smaller Simon effects for blocks with potential losses than rewards • No systematic behavioral differences between reward and loss conditions for older adults • Young adults shifted to a more conservative response tendency in the loss condition, whereas older adults adopted a more conservative response criterion for the reward condition.
Drueke et al., 2012	Behavioral	23.9 and 70.5 years	Groups with block-wise performance feedback (mean RT) vs. without feedback	Flanker task	• In younger adults, performance feedback led to faster RTs and smaller RT congruency effects at the expense of increased error rates • In older adults, feedback led to higher error rates, but had no effect on RT
Drueke et al., 2015	fMRI	20–38 and 62–77 years	Trial-wise performance feedback (happy, sad or neutral smileys)	Flanker task	• Younger and older adults showed comparable reward-related activation • Positive feedback elicited the strongest striatal and amygdala activation and slightly faster reaction times in older and younger adults
Schmitt et al., 2015	ERPs	19–28 and 69–78 years	Monetary incentives (gains, losses, or neutral)	Modified AX-CPT	• Age-invariant enhanced processing of gain and loss as compared to neutral cues • Younger adults were particularly susceptible to potential losses as indexed by improved context maintenance (larger CNV) prior to the probe and increased conflict detection (N450) and resolution (sustained positivity) during response selection after loss cues • Older adults showed enhanced cognitive control during task preparation (larger cue-locked P3b) and during response preparation and execution (prolonged probe-locked P3b) after gain and loss cues
Schmitt et al., 2017	ERPs	65–76 and 69–78 years	Monetary incentives (gains, losses, or neutral)	Modified AX-CPT	• When incentives are presented in a block-wise manner, older adults initially process cues signaling potential losses more strongly, but invest more cognitive resources in preparatory processes like context updating in conditions with potential gains
Spaniol et al., 2015	fMRI	20–33 and 60–78 years	Monetary incentives (Win $5, Win $0, Lose $5, and Lose $0)	Monetary incentive delay (MID) task	• Two significant latent variables representing distinct incentive-related activation patterns: (1) Robust activation of the reward network, not modulated by age (2) Peaking 10 s after cue onset, reduced deactivation of default-network regions and increased activation of prefrontal cognitive-control regions in older adults
Wild-Wall et al., 2009	ERPs	23.7 and 57.5 years	Verbal performance feedback (correct/incorrect)	Motor timing task	• Both age groups more accurate following positive compared to negative feedback • Only young adults improved following negative performance feedback, older adults more likely to commit another error following an error feedback • Only for young adults, differences in FRN amplitudes between error and correct feedback correspond to the percentage of correct responses • Reduced differentiation of FRN amplitudes between correct and incorrect trials for older adults
Williams et al., 2017	Behavioral	18–34 and 60–82 years	Gains and losses	Attention network test (ANT)	• Both types of rewards improved overall performance (dividing RT by accuracy) across groups, but both effects were more pronounced for younger adults • Rewards not only reduced overall RTs, but also considerably increased interference effects in terms of accuracy (modified speed/accuracy tradeoff rather than enhanced cognitive control)