Citation

Cavanagh JF, Neville D, Cohen MX, Van de Vijver I, Harsay H, Watson P, Buitenweg JI, Ridderinkhof KR. Front. Neurosci. 2012; 6: 111.

Affiliation

Department of Cognitive, Linguistic and Psychological Sciences, Brown University Providence, RI, USA.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2012, Frontiers Research Foundation)

DOI

10.3389/fnins.2012.00111

PMID

22822391

Abstract

Increasing age is associated with subtle but meaningful changes in decision-making. It is unknown, however, to what degree these psychological changes are reflective of age-related changes in decision quality. Here, we investigated the effect of age on latent cognitive processes associated with risky decision-making on the Balloon Analog Risk Task (BART). In the BART, participants repetitively inflate a balloon in order to increase potential reward. At any point, participants can decide to cash-out to harvest the reward, or they can continue, risking a balloon pop that erases all earnings. We found that among seniors, increasing age was associated with greater reward-related risk taking when the balloon has a higher probability of popping (i.e., a "high risk" condition). Cognitive modeling results from hierarchical Bayesian estimation suggested that performance differences were due to increased reward sensitivity in high risk conditions in seniors.

Language: en