Neurocognitive development of novelty and error monitoring in children and adolescents

The abilities to monitor one’s actions and novel information in the environment are crucial for behavioural and cognitive control. This study investigated the development of error and novelty monitoring and their electrophysiological correlates by using a combined flanker with novelty-oddball task in children (7–12 years) and adolescents (14–18 years). Potential moderating influences of prenatal perturbation of steroid hormones on these performance monitoring processes were explored by comparing individuals who were prenatally exposed and who were not prenatally exposed to synthetic glucocorticoids (sGC). Generally, adolescents performed more accurately and faster than children. However, behavioural adaptations to error or novelty, as reflected in post-error or post-novelty slowing, showed different developmental patterns. Whereas post-novelty slowing could be observed in children and adolescents, error-related slowing was absent in children and was marginally significant in adolescents. Furthermore, the amplitude of error-related negativity was larger in adolescents, whereas the amplitude of novelty-related N2 was larger in children. These age differences suggest that processes involving top-down processing of task-relevant information (for instance, error monitoring) mature later than processes implicating bottom-up processing of salient novel stimuli (for instance, novelty monitoring). Prenatal exposure to sGC did not directly affect performance monitoring but initial findings suggest that it might alter brain-behaviour relation, especially for novelty monitoring.