loss, showing larger FRNs to both negative and positive feedback compared to 13–14-year-old adolescents and to young and older adults. Similar to adults, their adolescent group did differentiate between rewards and losses. Santesso, Dzyundzyak, and Segalowitz (2011) examined the FRN in 16–17-year-old adolescents and adults 18–29 years of age in a non-learning feedback reward task. They found comparable FRN magnitudes for the late adolescent group and the young adult group. However, in a study comparing 14–17-year-old adolescent males and young adult males (22–26 yrs.), Zottoli and Grose-Fifer (2011) did observe larger FRNs in their adolescent group and greater differentiation between win and loss among their young adult group. Across the three of the four studies, we generally see larger FRNs in childhood and smaller adult-like FRN responses appearing in adolescence. However, the rapid developmental changes taking place from early to late adolescence underscore the importance of examining late childhood through later adolescence in the same study. Here we report on a developmental study of the FRN directly comparing 10–12-year-old, 13–14-year-old, and 15–17-year-old youth on a chance-based reward versus non-reward FRN task.
