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Chapter 5
Abstract
Flexible cognitive control refers to the ability to adapt to our ever changing environment and
is a hallmark of human cognition. It is well known that optimal flexible cognitive control is
sensitive to reward motivation and that the promise of a reward can improve performance
on tasks of flexible cognitive control, such as task-switching paradigms. Healthy aging is
accompanied by impairments in flexible cognitive control, but also in reward-related processes
and changes in processing speed. Here we test the hypothesis that changes in task-switching
ability across the life span are a function of promised reward. We tested 118 participants
(14-69 years old) on a task-switching paradigm with a reward motivation manipulation.
Results revealed that increasing age is associated with reduced influence of a promised reward
on flexible cognitive control, in terms of speed-accuracy strategy. These findings indicate that
healthy aging across the life span is accompanied by diminished reward-related adaptation of
cognitive strategy during task-switching.