Interactions of age and cognitive functions in predicting decision making under risky conditions over the life span

Abstract

Little is known about how normal healthy aging affects decision-making competence. In this study 538 participants (age 18-80 years) performed the Game of Dice Task (GDT). Subsamples also performed the Iowa Gambling Task as well as tasks measuring logical thinking and executive functions. In a moderated regression analysis, the significant interaction between age and executive components indicates that older participants with good executive functioning perform well on the GDT, while older participants with reduced executive functions make more risky choices. The same pattern emerges for the interaction of age and logical thinking. Results demonstrate that age and cognitive functions act in concert in predicting the decision-making performance.

Sex and HIV serostatus differences in decision making under risk among substance-dependent individuals

“…Our finding of a significant Sex × HIV Serostatus interaction is atypical compared with studies of GDT performance among non-clinical populations, which have shown no evidence of sex differences (Brand & Schiebener, 2013; Schiebener & Brand, 2015); however, the finding that GDT performance appears less impaired among HIV+ men than HIV+ women is consistent with previous reports by our group (E. Martin, Gonzalez, Vassileva, & Maki, 2011) that HIV+ women performed measures of probability and motor skill learning significantly more poorly than HIV− women, but HIV+ and HIV− men showed no differences in performance.…”

“…Over 50% of the current study sample was female, which enabled us to explore potential sex differences or interactive effects of sex and HIV serostatus on GDT performance. Decision making among HIV+ men and women has not been compared directly, and the available literature on decision making among normal participants has yielded mixed results: males typically outperform females on the IGT (van den Bos, Homberg, & de Visser, 2013) and on the Cups Task (Weller et al, 2010), but there is no evidence of sex differences in GDT performance (Brand & Schiebener, 2013). …”

Further evidence of a dissociation between decision-making under ambiguity and decision-making under risk in obsessive–compulsive disorder

“…In fact, most previous studies that used the GDT have shown that decision-making under the explicit condition is correlated with executive functions, such as categorizing options, set-shifting, and cognitive flexibility, which are often measured with the WCST (Brand et al, 2007a(Brand et al, , 2005a(Brand et al, , 2005b(Brand et al, , 2004(Brand et al, , 2008bBrand and Schiebener, 2013). From the results of our study, we have discerned that decision-making under risk in OCD would involve different cognitive processes other than the abovementioned executive functions.…”

Educational status influences cognitive-motor learning in older adults: going to university provides greater protection against aging than going to high school

“…dementia) 7 . The complex abilities of processing internal and environmental information, establishing and achieving goals, solving problems and making decisions are known as executive functions 12,13,14,15 . Highly-educated individuals have better performances on executive function tasks.…”