The Effects of Age, Priming, and Working Memory on Decision-Making.

Meagan Wood,Sheila Black,Ansley Gilpin

doi:10.3390/ijerph13010119

Meagan Wood, Sheila Black + Show 1 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph13010119

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Abstract

In the current study, we examined the effects of priming and personality on risky decision-making while playing the Game of Dice Task (GDT). In the GDT, participants decide how risky they wish to be on each trial. In this particular study prior to playing the GDT, participants were randomly assigned to one of three priming conditions: Risk-Aversive, Risk-Seeking, or Control. In the Risk-Seeking condition, a fictional character benefitted from risky behavior while in the Risk-Aversive condition, a fictional character benefitted from exercising caution. Although not explicitly stated in the instructions, participants need to make “safe” rather than risky choices to optimize performance on the GDT. Participants were also given Daneman and Carpenter’s assessment of working memory task. Interestingly, although older adults self-reported being more cautious than younger adults on the Domain Specific Risk Attitude scale (DOSPERT), older adults made riskier decisions than younger adults on the GDT. However, after controlling for working memory, the age differences on the GDT became insignificant, indicating that working memory mediated the relation between age and risky decisions on the GDT.

Highlights

Older adults are often confronted with risk when making important decisions about their lives.For example, they are confronted with risk in making decisions about insurance policies, elective medical procedures, etc
The goal of the current study is to examine age differences in risky decision-making as a function of age, personality, attitude, and working memory processes
A number of analyses were conducted on the data which increases the probability of committing a Type I error; we acknowledge that marginal effects should be treated with some caution

Summary

Introduction

Older adults are often confronted with risk when making important decisions about their lives.For example, they are confronted with risk in making decisions about insurance policies, elective medical procedures, etc. Older adults are often confronted with risk when making important decisions about their lives. Due to age-related changes in cognitive resources older adults might not appreciate the level of risk associated with some ventures such as purchasing a product through a telemarketer, and as a result might make hasty and possibly costly decisions. One popular way of measuring age differences in risky decision-making is through gambling paradigms such as the Iowa Gambling Task (IGT). Participants make judgments implicitly, because they are implicitly but not explicitly aware of the outcomes associated with each deck of cards. After a number of trials, young adults at least become aware of the outcomes associated with each deck of cards. Several studies have found age differences in the IGT, but there has been no consensus among researchers about the source of the age differences, given that the IGT measures both implicit and explicit abilities [1]

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