The application of ultrashort laser fields to atomic, molecular and solid-state systems has become a subject of increasing interest in the last decades, with specific emphasis in the possibility for the coherent control of fundamental quantum processes like photoexcitation, photoionization and photofragmentation, among others. In the case of molecular systems, their photoreactivity involving excited states implies two ubiquitous type of transitions: because of radiative couplings due to the presence of the laser field and because of non-adiabatic couplings due to the breakdown of the Born-Oppenheimer approximation. We present a simple quantum model based on a particle in a box that includes both type of radiative and non-adiabatic couplings. Firstly, we show that non-adiabatic interactions may be as effective as the radiative ones to produce an equivalent dynamics. In addition, optimal control theory is applied to this model system to aid the excitation to a selected target and to understand the inner workings of the optimization method as applied to cases driven both by radiative and non-adiabatic interactions.