Learning lays the foundation for motivated behavior, enabling us to recognize and respond appropriately to salient events. However, to function adaptively in a dynamic environment, we must be able to flexibly alter learned behavioral responses in accordance with our ongoing experience. In this talk, I will present studies examining at the cognitive, neural, and computational levels how the learning processes that support adaptive behavioral flexibility change over the course of development from childhood to adulthood. I will show that development confers marked changes in the cognitive representations engaged during learning and I will propose that learning about the degree of instrumental agency afforded by the environment may be a critical factor that shapes an individual’s behavioral repertoire.