In this study we found

In this pamabrom study, we found that the fluid-reasoning abilities within a cohort of children, adolescents, and adults accounted for age-related changes in their recruitment of model-based learning. Fluid reasoning is a construct originating from the field of psychometric intelligence (Cattell, 1987), which typically employs tasks that are substantially different from those employed within cognitive psychology and neuroscience to assess related constructs such as working memory and other executive functions. While there is debate regarding the degree to which these overlapping constructs are indeed dissociable, (Friedman et al., 2006; Decker et al., 2007), our findings are consistent with others in the literature observing correlations between these cognitive constructs and reward-guided behaviors (Shamosh et al., 2008). We propose blending such correlations reflect a mechanistic relationship, in which these cognitive processes provide a foundation for the evaluative computations that inform motivated behavior. This interpretation, supported by our present findings, suggests a direct link between the protracted development of these cognitive abilities (Ferrer et al., 2009) and the marked developmental changes in reward-related decision-making (Hartley and Somerville, 2015).
Funding This work was supported by the National Institute on Drug Abuse (R03-DA038701), the Alice Bohmfalk Charitable Trust, an Esther Katz Rosen Fund grant from the American Psychological Foundation, and a generous gift from the family of Mortimer D. Sackler.
Acknowledgements