In everyday life, children often need to engage control in emotionally or motivationally relevant contexts. This study disentangled and directly compared the respective influences of external rewards and positive stimuli on childhood cognitive control. We expected external rewards to promote proactive cognitive control and positive stimuli to impair proactive control, especially in younger age. EEG data were recorded while children (5–6 years old and 9–10 years old) and adults completed a cued task-switching paradigm in three conditions: positive-stimulus, external-reward and control conditions. Provision of reward resulted in more accurate but slower responses, and more pronounced cue-locked posterior positivity, potentially suggesting general proactive mobilisation of attention (i.e., readiness). Despite no effects on behaviour, the presentation of positive stimuli was unexpectedly associated with a greater cue-locked extended slow-wave when task cues were presented ahead of targets (i.e. proactive-control possible) in younger children, suggesting greater proactive cue preparation. In contrast to our hypothesis, both external rewards and positive stimuli seem to promote different types of proactive approaches in children.

在日常生活中，孩子们经常需要在情感或动机相关的环境中进行控制。这项研究解开了并直接比较了外部奖励和积极刺激各自对儿童认知控制的影响。我们期望外部奖励能够促进主动认知控制，而积极刺激则会削弱主动控制，尤其是在年轻的时候。当儿童（5-6岁和9-10岁）和成人在三种条件下完成提示任务切换范式时，记录脑电图数据：正向刺激、外部奖励和控制条件。提供奖励会导致更准确但更慢的反应，以及更明显的线索锁定后积极性，这可能表明一般主动动员注意力（即准备状态）。尽管对行为没有影响，但当任务提示出现在年幼儿童的目标之前（即可能的主动控制）时，积极刺激的出现出乎意料地与更大的提示锁定扩展慢波相关，这表明更积极的提示准备。与我们的假设相反，外部奖励和积极刺激似乎都能促进儿童采取不同类型的积极主动的方法。