Zachary J. J. Roper, Shaun P. Vecera, Jatin G. Vaidya

Adolescence has been characterized as a period of both opportunity and vulnerability. Numerous clinical conditions, including substance-use disorders, often emerge during adolescence. These maladaptive behaviors have been linked to problems with cognitive control, yet few studies have investigated how rewards differentially modulate attentional processes in adolescents versus adults. Here, we trained adults and adolescents on a visual task to establish stimulus-reward associations. Later, we assessed learning in an extinction task in which previously rewarded stimuli periodically appeared as distractors. Both age groups initially demonstrated value-driven attentional capture; however, the effect persisted longer in adolescents than in adults. The results could not be explained by developmental differences in visual working memory. Given the importance of attentional control to daily behaviors and clinical conditions such as attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder, these results reveal that cognitive control failures in adolescence may be linked to a value-based attentional-capture effect.