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

风险下的决策是一种认知技能，它会影响整个生命周期的经济福利和生活质量。成年人在日常生活中做出的许多决定都需要在风险和收益不同的选择中做出选择。在“基于描述的决策”中，风险和收益是先验已知的（例如，“如果我选择手术，我有60%的机会完全康复”）。在更频繁发生的“经验决策”中，风险和利益要么必须从记忆中获取，要么必须通过探索获得。例如，当通勤者依靠过去的经验来选择上下班的备选路线时，他们可能会权衡每条路线的距离与道路封闭的可能性。衰老如何影响基于经验的决策？大量的实验室证据表明，与年龄相关的缺陷在根据经验做出决定时比根据描述做出决定时更为明显。然而，对老年人基于经验的选择的认知过程和神经基质知之甚少。利用实验室风险选择任务的概率经济收益和损失，拟议的研究将在五年的时间里调查三个新的研究问题：1)在基于经验的选择中，造成年龄差异的认知和情感机制是什么？2)哪些生态因素导致了基于经验的选择的年龄差异？3)衰老如何影响参与经验决策的神经回路？拟议研究的结果将有助于认知衰老和决策神经科学的进展，并有可能为老年人友好型决策辅助工具的发展提供信息。

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.