Age differences in experiential and deliberative processes in unambiguous and ambiguous decision making.

Abstract

Older adults experience declines in deliberative decisional capacities, while their affective or experiential abilities tend to remain intact (Peters & Bruine de Bruin, 2012). The current study used this framework to investigate age differences in description-based and experience-based decision-making tasks. Description-based tasks emphasize deliberative processing by allowing decision makers to analyze explicit descriptions of choice-reward information. Experience-based tasks emphasize affective or experiential processing because they lack the explicit choice-reward information, forcing decision makers to rely on feelings and information derived from past experiences. This study used the Columbia Card Task (CCT) as a description-based task where probability information is provided and the Iowa Gambling Task (IGT) as an experience-based task, where it is not. As predicted, compared to younger adults (N = 65), older adults (N = 65) performed more poorly on the CCT but performed similarly on the IGT. Deliberative capacities (i.e., executive control and numeracy abilities) explained the relationship between age and performance on the CCT, suggesting that age-related differences in description-based decision-making tasks are related to declines in deliberative capacities. However, deliberative capacities were not associated with performance on the IGT for either older or younger adults. Nevertheless, on the IGT, older adults reported more use of affect-based strategies versus deliberative strategies, whereas younger adults reported similar use of these strategies. This finding offers partial support for the idea that decision-making tasks that rely on deliberate processing are more likely to demonstrate age effects than those that are more experiential.

Neural mechanisms of decision‐making in aging

“…Studies of value processing that take into account on one's feelings and preferences for choice parameters find little or no evidence of age differences, while studies that place greater requirements on deliberative processing of explicit choice parameters tend to find evidence of age‐related decline. This pattern in consistent with a general shift from deliberative to intuitive/affective processing in aging (Huang et al, ; Mikels et al, ; Peters & Bruine de Bruin, ).…”

“…Many of these theories are built around research indicating that normal aging (implicitly, brain aging) causes selective declines in “fluid cognitive abilities” (a.k.a., deliberative functions; for example, processing speed, working memory, executive functioning; Horn & Cattell, ; Park & Schwarz, ; Peters, Hess, Västfjäll, & Auman, ; Salthouse, ; Schaie & Willis, ), while allowing for relative preservation or growth in “crystallized cognitive abilities” (knowledge; Horn & Cattell, ; Park & Schwarz, ; Salthouse, ; Schaie & Willis, ). In addition, normal aging has been associated with maintenance of affective skills (“affective resiliency”) and an increased prioritization of social and emotional goals (Carstensen et al, ) which can lead to selective processing of affective information (“affective enhancement”; Peters et al, ), increased efforts to regulate emotional states (Kryla‐Lighthall & Mather, ), and an increased reliance on affective/intuitive processing relative to deliberative processing (Huang, Wood, Berger, & Hanoch, ; Mikels, Cheung, Cone, & Gilovich, ; Peters & Bruine de Bruin, ). For example, the affect–integration–motivation (AIM) framework (Samanez‐Larkin & Knutson, 2015) describes how brain aging, preserved crystallized abilities, age‐related changes to affective goals may intersect to impact decision behavior in a context‐dependent manner.…”

Internet Safety and the Silver Surfer: The Relationship Between Gist Reasoning and Adults' Risky Online Behavior

“…During healthy ageing, specific (verbatim) representations of memory decay faster and are less accessible than gist representations, and as such, older adults' increased gist reasoning in false‐recall experiments has been linked to this decay in their neurocognitive functioning (e.g., Brainerd & Reyna, ; Koustaal et al, ). In addition, Corbin et al () found that individuals with higher working memory capacity show a preference for gist reasoning strategies in risky decision making, and Huang, Wood, Berger, and Hanoch () have shown that a greater age effect exists when participants make decisions on deliberative tasks compared with experiential tasks. Therefore, it is possible that increases in, and preferences for, gist reasoning emerge via a process of increased life experience alongside reduced cognitive ability.…”

Age-related Changes in Auditory Cortex Without Detectable Peripheral Alterations: A Multi-level Study in Sprague–Dawley Rats

“…However, we should bear in mind that in the results of psychoacoustic studies depend not only on auditory system performance, but also on processing steps, such as attention and decision-making, which are also affected by aging (Füllgrabe et al, 2014;Huang et al, 2015;Strough et al, 2015). The deficits in psychoacoustic tasks observed in humans may be due to a decline of attentional and cognitive abilities (review in Fullgrabe et al 2014).…”