Experience-based decision making in younger and older adults: Behavioural and neuroimaging studies

点击翻译按钮获取中文摘要

Decision making under risk is a cognitive skill that affects economic welfare and quality of life across the lifespan. Many of the decisions that adults make in their everyday lives require choosing among options that differ with respect to risks and benefits. In "decisions from description", risks and benefits are known a priori (e.g., "If I choose the surgery, I have a 60% chance of full recovery"). In the more frequently occurring "decisions from experience", risks and benefits must be either retrieved from memory, or acquired through exploration. For example, when commuters rely on past experience to choose among alternate routes to work, they may weigh the shortness of each route against the probability of a road closure. How does aging affect experience-based decision making? The bulk of the laboratory evidence suggests that age-related deficits are more pronounced for decisions from experience than for decisions from description. However, little is known about the cognitive processes and neural substrates of experience-based choice in older adults. Using a laboratory risky-choice task with probabilistic financial gains and losses, the proposed research will investigate three novel research questions over five years: 1) What are the cognitive and affective mechanisms that contribute to age differences in experience-based choice? 2) Which ecological factors contribute to age differences in experience-based choice? 3) How does aging affect the neural circuitry involved in decisions from experience? Findings from the proposed studies will contribute to progress in cognitive aging and decision neuroscience, and have the potential to inform advances in the development of elder-friendly decision aids.