Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society

Previous work has revealed that the ability to strategically en-code high-value information may improve gradually over de-velopment as cognitive control mechanisms mature. However,studies of value-directed memory have relied on explicit cuesof information value, which are rarely present in real-worldcontexts. Here, using a novel fMRI paradigm, we examinedwhether individuals across a wide age range (N = 90; ages 8– 25 years) could learn the value of information from expe-rience and use learned value signals to strategically modulatememory. We found that memory prioritization for high-valueinformation improved across development, and was supportedby increased engagement of the caudate and prefrontal cortexduring both encoding and retrieval of high-value information.Our results suggest that across development, the dynamic ad-justment of memory based on the statistics of the environmentis supported by a wide network of brain regions involved inboth the recognition and use of information value.