Children and adults differ in how primary and secondary incentives modulate valuation, effort, and cognitive control

Abstract

Rewards have a profound impact on human motivation, cognition, affect, and behaviour. The study of reward processing and incentive effects therefore occupies a central place in psychology and cognitive neuroscience. One common assumption when comparing groups or individuals is that different reward types are valued similarly. Here we examined this assumption in a sample of 51 adults and 39 children (7–12 years) using both primary and secondary rewards. Across three tasks – subjective valuation, willingness to exert cognitive effort, and reward-related modulation of cognitive control – adults showed stronger effects of secondary relative to primary reinforcers, whereas children showed comparatively similar responses across reward types. While we interpret our findings as consistent with age-group differences in the value assigned to secondary reinforcers, larger longitudinal studies using more closely matched incentives will be required to determine how such differences emerge across development. More broadly, our work highlights the importance of carefully considering incentive value when comparing different groups on reward-related processes.