Incentives can modulate cognitive control in numerous ways. Being rewarded for performance on a given task may make people work harder and ultimately perform better than when not rewarded. Alternatively, the capacity to exert control is challenged when required to suppress thoughts and actions toward appetitive cues. Recent studies of adolescent development have begun to compare cognitive control capacity in relatively neutral versus motivational contexts. These studies suggest a change in sensitivity to environmental cues, especially reward-based ones (see [8,15] for discussion of sensitivity to aversive cues), at different points in development, and suggest a unique influence of motivation on cognition during the adolescent years.
