Older adults process the probability of winning sooner but weigh it less during lottery decisions

Research output: Contribution to journalResearch articleContributed

Contributors

Abstract

Empirical evidence has shown that visually enhancing the saliency of reward probabilities can ease the cognitive demands of value comparisons and improve value-based decisions in old age. In the present study, we used a time-varying drift diffusion model that includes starting time parameters to better understand (1) how increasing the saliency of reward probabilities may affect the dynamics of value-based decision-making and (2) how these effects may interact with age. We examined choices made by younger and older adults in a mixed lottery choice task. On a subset of trials, we used a color-coding scheme to highlight the saliency of reward probabilities, which served as a decision-aid. The results showed that, in control trials, older adults started to consider probability relative to magnitude information sooner than younger adults, but that their evidence accumulation processes were less sensitive to reward probabilities than that of younger adults. This may indicate a noisier and more stochastic information accumulation process during value-based decisions in old age. The decision-aid increased the influence of probability information on evidence accumulation rates in both age groups, but did not alter the relative timing of accumulation for probability versus magnitude in either group.

Details

Original languageEnglish
Article number11381
Number of pages12
JournalScientific reports
Volume12
Publication statusPublished - 5 Jul 2022
Peer-reviewedNo

External IDs

Scopus 85133475262
PubMed 35790772
Mendeley 7dcdcc2d-5ec5-355f-aae0-6ba48e8aceab
unpaywall 10.1038/s41598-022-15432-y
ORCID /0000-0001-8409-5390/work/142254920

Keywords

ASJC Scopus subject areas

Keywords

  • Cognition, Decision Making, Probability, Reward