The ability to decide advantageously declines prematurely in some normal older persons

Older adults make less advantageous decisions than younger adults: Cognitive and psychological correlates

“…One study examined abstinent alcoholics ranging from 35 to 85 years of age, and the other examined active, treatment-naïve alcoholics that were 18 to 55 years of age. Following Denburg et al(2005), participants were divided into younger and older groups at a breakpoint of 55 years of age. The younger group consisted of 49 men, and 63 women from 18 through 55 years old (M = 37.8, SD = 10.7).…”

“…Participants were divided into two groups with the cutoff at age 55 based upon Denburg's paper (Denburg et al, 2005). We performed polynomial regression of IGT performance as a function of age to examine how age affected IGT performance over the entire study age range.…”

“…While Wood et al (2005) did not report any significant age-related differences in advantageous decisions, the mean performance for older adults was non-significantly lower than that of younger adults and older adults used different strategies than younger adults when learning the task. Finally, MacPherson and colleagues (2002) reported no significant differences in advantageous decision-making between younger and older adults; however, as pointed out by Denburg et al (2005), older adults had generally flatter learning curves compared with younger adults, which seems to suggest some impairment in the ability to learn to make more advantageous decisions over time.…”

“…Recent studies using the IGT suggest that decision-making in older adults is associated with different cognitive processes than in younger adults (Wood et al, 2005), and there may be some evidence that at least some older adults make less advantageous decisions than younger adults (Deakin et al, 2004;Denburg et al, 2005). Denburg and colleagues (2005) found that older adults (56 -85 years) made generally less advantageous decisions compared with their sample of younger adults (26 -55 years).…”

“…Denburg and colleagues (2005) found that older adults (56 -85 years) made generally less advantageous decisions compared with their sample of younger adults (26 -55 years). Denburg et al's (2005) analyses revealed that nearly one half of their older adults were clearly impaired in their decisions, and never learned to shift their decision-making strategies in order to make more advantageous decisions. However, the other half of the older adults were not impaired at all and showed the same pattern of advantageous decisions as the younger adults in their sample.…”