The Context of Caution: An Examination of Age, Social Context, and Sex on Measures of Inhibitory Control and Risky Decision-Making

2019 ◽  
Vol 90 (1) ◽  
pp. 84-103 ◽  
Author(s):  
Raquel A. Cowell ◽  
Elizabeth R. Paitel ◽  
Sierra Peters
Keyword(s):  
Older Adults ◽  
Decision Making ◽  
Inhibitory Control ◽  
Flanker Task ◽  
Adult Males ◽  
Risky Decision ◽  
Younger Adults ◽  
Attentional Processes ◽  
Main Effect ◽  
Comparable Accuracy

Understanding how older adults successfully navigate complex choices like driving requires the consideration of processing speed, inhibitory control, attentional processes, and risk management, and the context within which these decisions occur. The current study employed the Flanker task, the Stoplight task, and a personality inventory with 43 younger adults and 49 older adults either while they were alone or being observed by two same-sex, similarly aged peers. On the Flanker task, older adults performed more slowly, but with comparable accuracy. On the Stoplight task, there was a significant main effect of Context, and an Age-Group by Sex interaction, even after controlling for response time: All groups had a greater number of crashes when alone, and young adult males had significantly more crashes than any other group. These results emphasize the importance of considering the broader context of decision-making.

scholarly journals Effects of age on inhibitory control are affected by task-specific features

2018 ◽  
Vol 71 (5) ◽  
pp. 1219-1233 ◽  
Author(s):  
Angela de Bruin ◽  
Sergio Della Sala
Keyword(s):  
Older Adults ◽  
Inhibitory Control ◽  
Processing Speed ◽  
Simon Task ◽  
Flanker Task ◽  
Reaction Times ◽  
Age Effects ◽  
Control Task ◽  
Younger Adults

Older adults have been argued to have impoverished inhibitory control compared to younger adults. However, these effects of age may depend on processing speed and their manifestation may furthermore depend on the type of inhibitory control task that is used. We present two experiments that examine age effects on inhibition across three tasks: a Simon arrow, static flanker and motion flanker task. The results showed overall slower reaction times (RTs) for older adults on all three tasks. However, effects of age on inhibition costs were only found for the Simon task, but not for the two flanker tasks. The motion flanker task furthermore showed an effect of baseline processing speed on the relation between age and inhibition costs. Older adults with slower baseline responses showed smaller inhibition costs, suggesting they were affected less by the flanker items than faster older adults. These findings suggest that effects of age on inhibition are task dependent and can be modulated by task-specific features such as the type of interference, type of stimuli and processing speed.

Age-Related Differences in Motivational Integration and Cognitive Control

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Debbie Marianne Yee ◽  
Sarah L Adams ◽  
Asad Beck ◽  
Todd Samuel Braver
Keyword(s):  
Older Adults ◽  
Decision Making ◽  
Cognitive Control ◽  
Task Performance ◽  
Cognitive Task ◽  
Monetary Reward ◽  
Potential Candidate ◽  
Younger Adults ◽  
Age Related ◽  
Cognitive Task Performance

Motivational incentives play an influential role in value-based decision-making and cognitive control. A compelling hypothesis in the literature suggests that the brain integrates the motivational value of diverse incentives (e.g., motivational integration) into a common currency value signal that influences decision-making and behavior. To investigate whether motivational integration processes change during healthy aging, we tested older (N=44) and younger (N=54) adults in an innovative incentive integration task paradigm that establishes dissociable and additive effects of liquid (e.g., juice, neutral, saltwater) and monetary incentives on cognitive task performance. The results reveal that motivational incentives improve cognitive task performance in both older and younger adults, providing novel evidence demonstrating that age-related cognitive control deficits can be ameliorated with sufficient incentive motivation. Additional analyses revealed clear age-related differences in motivational integration. Younger adult task performance was modulated by both monetary and liquid incentives, whereas monetary reward effects were more gradual in older adults and more strongly impacted by trial-by-trial performance feedback. A surprising discovery was that older adults shifted attention from liquid valence toward monetary reward throughout task performance, but younger adults shifted attention from monetary reward toward integrating both monetary reward and liquid valence by the end of the task, suggesting differential strategic utilization of incentives. Together these data suggest that older adults may have impairments in incentive integration, and employ different motivational strategies to improve cognitive task performance. The findings suggest potential candidate neural mechanisms that may serve as the locus of age-related change, providing targets for future cognitive neuroscience investigations.

scholarly journals Age Differences in Executive Control Assessed with a Robotic Object Hit and Avoid Test of Rapid Motor Decision Making

2020 ◽  
Vol 4 (Supplement_1) ◽  
pp. 881-882
Author(s):  
Alexandra Watral ◽  
Kevin Trewartha
Keyword(s):  
Older Adults ◽  
Decision Making ◽  
Executive Functioning ◽  
Age Differences ◽  
Executive Control ◽  
Test Performance ◽  
Cognitive Status ◽  
Younger Adults ◽  
Neuropsychological Tasks ◽  
Measures Of Performance

Abstract Motor decision-making processes are required for many standard neuropsychological tasks, including the Trail Making Test (TMT), that aim to assess cognitive functioning in older adults. However, in their standard formats, it is difficult to isolate the relative contributions of sensorimotor and cognitive processes to performance on these neuropsychological tasks. Recently developed clinical tasks use a robotic manipulandum to assess both motor and cognitive aspects of rapid motor decision making in an object hit (OH) and object hit and avoid (OHA) task. We administered the OH and OHA tasks to 77 healthy younger adults and 59 healthy older adults to assess age differences in the motor and cognitive measures of performance. We administered the TMT parts A and B to assess the extent to which OHA performance is associated with executive functioning in particular. The results indicate that after controlling for hand speed, older adults performed worse on the OH and OHA tasks than younger adults, performance declines were far greater in the OHA task, and the global performance measures, which have been associated with cognitive status, were more sensitive to age differences than motor measures of performance. Those global measures of performance were also associated with measures of executive functioning on the TMT task. These findings provide evidence that rapid motor decision making tasks are sensitive to declines in executive control in aging. They also provide a way to isolate cognitive declines from declines in sensorimotor processes that are likely a contributing factor to age differences in neuropsychological test performance.

scholarly journals With Age Comes Wisdom

2011 ◽  
Vol 22 (11) ◽  
pp. 1375-1380 ◽  
Author(s):  
Darrell A. Worthy ◽  
Marissa A. Gorlick ◽  
Jennifer L. Pacheco ◽  
David M. Schnyer ◽  
W. Todd Maddox
Keyword(s):  
Older Adults ◽  
Decision Making ◽  
Fundamental Difference ◽  
Behavioral Changes ◽  
Younger Adults ◽  
Independent Task ◽  
The Stability ◽  
The Way

In two experiments, younger and older adults performed decision-making tasks in which reward values available were either independent of or dependent on the previous sequence of choices made. The choice-independent task involved learning and exploiting the options that gave the highest rewards on each trial. In this task, the stability of the expected reward for each option was not influenced by the previous choices participants made. The choice-dependent task involved learning how each choice influenced future rewards for two options and making the best decisions based on that knowledge. Younger adults performed better when rewards were independent of choice, whereas older adults performed better when rewards were dependent on choice. These findings suggest a fundamental difference in the way in which younger adults and older adults approach decision-making situations. We discuss the results in the context of prominent decision-making theories and offer possible explanations based on neurobiological and behavioral changes associated with aging.

scholarly journals Risky decision-making is associated with residential choice in healthy older adults

2015 ◽  
Vol 6 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kendra L. Seaman ◽  
Chelsea M. Stillman ◽  
Darlene V. Howard ◽  
James H. Howard
Keyword(s):  
Older Adults ◽  
Decision Making ◽  
Residential Choice ◽  
Risky Decision Making ◽  
Risky Decision ◽  
Healthy Older Adults

Risky Decision Making Across Three Arenas of Choice: Are Younger and Older Adults Differently Susceptible to Framing Effects?

2005 ◽  
Vol 132 (1) ◽  
pp. 81-93 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael RÖnnlund ◽  
Erik Karlsson ◽  
Erica Laggnäs ◽  
Lisa Larsson ◽  
Therese Lindström
Keyword(s):  
Older Adults ◽  
Decision Making ◽  
Framing Effects ◽  
Risky Decision Making ◽  
Risky Decision

scholarly journals No evidence of word-level uncertainty in younger and older adults in self-paced reading

2021 ◽  
pp. 174702182110459
Author(s):  
Michael G Cutter ◽  
Kevin B Paterson ◽  
Ruth Filik
Keyword(s):  
Older Adults ◽  
Normal Aging ◽  
Perceptual Processing ◽  
Experimental Paradigm ◽  
Theoretical Level ◽  
Younger Adults ◽  
Word Level ◽  
Spatial Frequencies ◽  
Main Effect ◽  
Reading Study

In a self-paced reading study, we investigated whether older adults maintain a greater level of uncertainty about the identity of words in a sentence than younger adults, potentially due to deficits in visuo-perceptual processing of high-spatial frequencies associated with normal aging. In the experiment, 60 older adults and 60 younger adults read sentences in which an early preposition was either perceptually confusable with another word ( at; confusable with as) or not ( toward), and in which the reading of a subsequent ambiguous verb (e.g., tossed) should be affected by the confusability of the preposition, while the reading of an unambiguous verb (e.g., thrown) should not be. This design replicated that of an earlier study conducted by Levy et al. (2009) that found evidence in favour of participants maintaining uncertainty about the confusable preposition in go-past times during natural reading. However, in our study, there was no evidence that either younger or older adults maintained uncertainty about the identity of the perceptually confusable preposition, such that there was no interaction between the preposition’s form and subsequent verb ambiguity in self-paced reading times, although we did observe a main effect of verb ambiguity. This represents a failure to replicate the effect observed by Levy et al. when using a different experimental paradigm, and we consider potential causes of our findings at both a methodological and theoretical level.

scholarly journals LINKS BETWEEN POSITIVE AFFECT AND DISENGAGEMENT FROM NEGATIVE STIMULI IN YOUNGER AND OLDER ADULTS

2019 ◽  
Vol 3 (Supplement_1) ◽  
pp. S307-S307
Author(s):  
Kathryn L Ossenfort ◽  
Derek M Isaacowitz
Keyword(s):  
Older Adults ◽  
Negative Affect ◽  
Positive Affect ◽  
Positive And Negative Affect ◽  
Similar Response ◽  
Attentional Disengagement ◽  
Younger Adults ◽  
Attentional Processes ◽  
Age Related ◽  
Negative Stimuli

Abstract Older adults attend to more positive than negative content compared to younger adults; this “age-related positivity” effect is often thought of as a way older adults may be regulating their moods. However, attentional disengagement abilities decline with age, which may make positive looking more challenging for older adults in some cases. To evaluate links between early attentional processes and affect, 48 younger adult and 49 older adult participants reported levels of positive and negative affect on the Positive and Negative Affect Scale (PANAS) and completed a spatial cueing task evaluating attentional orienting and disengagement from emotional stimuli. Participants were tasked with responding to the location of a spatial target after seeing a cue (emotional image) that either appeared on the same (orienting) or opposite (disengagement) side of the screen. Multilevel modeling analyses were conducted using age and self-reported affect from the PANAS as predictors at level-2, and trial characteristics as predictors at level-1. Positive affect (PA) was unrelated to task performance for younger adults. Older adults reporting higher PA responded more slowly overall, and higher PA scores predicted similar response times to positive and negative stimuli on both trial types. Older adults reporting lower PA oriented attention more quickly to positive stimuli, but took longer to disengage from negative. These results suggest that there may be a relationship between the ability to flexibly disengage from negative content and PA for older, but not younger adults, and also highlight the importance of teasing apart specific attentional processes when evaluating positivity effects.

Strive to Win or Not to Lose? Age-Related Differences in Framing Effects on Effort-Based Decision-Making

2019 ◽  
Vol 75 (10) ◽  
pp. 2095-2105 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kaileigh A Byrne ◽  
Reza Ghaiumy Anaraky
Keyword(s):  
Older Adults ◽  
Decision Making ◽  
Framing Effects ◽  
Loss Prevention ◽  
Younger Adults ◽  
Age Related ◽  
Trial Basis ◽  
High Effort

Abstract Objectives This study sought to assess how framing effects modulate age-related differences in effort-based decision-making. Consistent with the selection, optimization, and compensation (SOC) model’s loss prevention account of aging, we predicted that older adults would be more willing to select high-effort options in loss contexts than gain contexts. Method Older and younger adults completed the effort expenditure for rewards task (EEfRT) in either a gain or loss context. The EEfRT is an effort-based decision-making paradigm in which participants choose between a low-effort, “easy” option and a high-effort, “hard” option for several trials. The probability and value of an outcome varies on a trial-by-trial basis. Results The results supported our prediction and the SOC model. Older adults chose more high-effort, difficult options in loss frames than gain frames. Older adults also chose more low-effort, easy options than younger adults in gain contexts, but did not differ from younger adults in loss contexts. Discussion These findings demonstrate that framing effects impact older adults’ effort-based decisions. Older adults appear willing to incur a greater “cost” in the form of effort to prevent a loss than to attain a reward.

Receptive Vocabulary, Cognitive Flexibility, and Inhibitory Control Differentially Predict Older and Younger Adults' Success Perceiving Speech by Talkers With Dysarthria

2017 ◽  
Vol 60 (12) ◽  
pp. 3632-3641 ◽  
Author(s):  
Erin M. Ingvalson ◽  
Kaitlin L. Lansford ◽  
Valeriya Fedorova ◽  
Gabriel Fernandez
Keyword(s):  
Older Adults ◽  
Inhibitory Control ◽  
Cognitive Flexibility ◽  
Executive Control ◽  
Receptive Vocabulary ◽  
Younger Adults ◽  
Control Functions ◽  
Hearing Acuity ◽  
Dysarthric Speech ◽  
Intelligibility Ratings

Purpose Previous research has demonstrated equivocal findings related to the effect of listener age on intelligibility ratings of dysarthric speech. The aim of the present study was to investigate the mechanisms that support younger and older adults' perception of speech by talkers with dysarthria. Method Younger and older adults identified words in phrases produced by talkers with dysarthria. Listeners also completed assessments on peripheral hearing, receptive vocabulary, and executive control functions. Results Older and younger adults did not differ in their ability to perceive speech by talkers with dysarthria. Younger adults' success in identifying words produced by talkers with dysarthria was associated only with their hearing acuity. In contrast, older adults showed effects of working memory and cognitive flexibility and interactions between hearing acuity and receptive vocabulary and between hearing acuity and inhibitory control. Conclusions Although older and younger adults had equivalent performance identifying words produced by talkers with dysarthria, older adults appear to utilize more cognitive support to identify those words.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document