Figure 3: Transition Effects Between Baseline to Incentive Blocks.

Averaged response times across the last 20 trials of the baseline block and first 20 trials of the first incentive block. Younger adults were able to instantaneously reduce their RT when transitioning between baseline and incentive blocks, and this resulted in relatively stable performance during the incentive block. Conversely, older adults both significantly reduced their RT between blocks and across trials in the incentive block, revealing that OA progressively also sped up during the start of the incentive block. These age differences reveal that younger and older adults implement distinct strategies under motivated task conditions.