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Frontiers Media, Frontiers in Neuroscience, (6)

DOI: 10.3389/fnins.2012.00111

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Individual Differences in Risky Decision-Making Among Seniors Reflect Increased Reward Sensitivity

Journal article published in 2012 by James F. Cavanagh ORCID, David Neville, Michael X. Cohen, Irene Van de Vijver, Helga Harsay, Poppy Watson ORCID, Jessika I. Buitenweg, K. Richard Ridderinkhof
This paper is made freely available by the publisher.
This paper is made freely available by the publisher.

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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.