Timo Mäntylä, Psychology, Stockholm University

2009-2015

Decision-making skills are critical for preserving physical and psychological well-being in older adulthood. Elderly adults continue to take everyday life decisions, but with advanced age, they have to face new, and sometimes even more complex, decision-making problems. The general objective of the research program is to investigate decision-making competence (DMC) across the adult lifespan in order to increase the existing knowledge and to orient the design of effective forms of decision support for elderly people. More specific goals of the project were to develop standardized instruments for the objective assessment of individual and age-related differences in judgment and decision-making competence. Partly using this instrument for the assessment of individual differences in DMC another central goal of the project was to investigate test specific hypotheses on decision making in aging, derived from the theoretical background of the project. A more applied objective of the project was to investigate how older adults perceive and evaluate decision problems in their real life, and to understand how the aging decision makers interact with the environment in order to cope with cognitive and emotional changes.

The project has followed its original plan, except that several new research questions were addressed during the second half of the project period. As this work required additional data collection and longitudinal comparisons, the project period was extended with one year. The project has generated new results and insights about individual and age-related differences in decision making and related higher cognitive functions. These findings have attracted considerable interest and published in prominent scientific journals.

Three Most Important Results
The most important results of the project relate to concrete questions raised in the application. First, the methodological achievements of the project included the development of Italian and Swedish versions of the Adult Decision-Making Competence Battery (A-DMC; cf. Bruine de Bruin, Parker& Fischhoff, 2007). The Swedish version of the instrument was developed and validated in the context of a large population-based (Betula) study on aging and cognition.

The most important theoretical contributions of the project were that individual and age-related differences in decision-making competence (DMC) reflect selective effects of components of executive functioning (EF). Specifically, and consistent with our hypothesis, the results showed that individual differences in EF components explained aspects of decision?making competence even after controlling for fluid intelligence and numeracy. However, different aspects of decision?making competence varied in the extent to which they relied on different executive functions. In particular, resistance to framing effects and the ability to apply decision rules partially depend on individual and age-related differences on the monitoring/inhibition dimension of EF. The ability to provide consistent judgments in risk perception is related to the shifting aspect of EF. The ability to recognize social norms and resistance to sunk costs were not significantly related to EF, thus supporting the idea that executive control is not a major determinant of these aspects of decision?making competence, which may rely more on experience and domain-specific knowledge.

Another central finding of the project was that the relation between age and DMC is mainly mediated by individual differences in memory functions. Specifically, we carried out a systematic investigation of the relationship between individual differences in memory processes and multiple aspects of decision-making competence on a sample of 568 Swedish adults in the age range 25-80. The results of structural equation modeling showed that diverse memory processes contribute differentially to different aspects of decision making (as measured by the A-DMC). Working memory was positively related to the ability to resist framing effects, the correct application of decision rules, and judgment calibration. Episodic memory was positively associated with the ability to recognize social norms. Semantic memory was positively related to consistency in risk perception and the abilities to resist sunk costs and correctly apply decision rules. More importantly, the significant age-related decline observed in some decision-making tasks (i.e., resistance to framing effects, ability to apply decision rules, and judgment calibration) was (partially or totally) mediated by a corresponding age-related decline in working memory.

New Research Questions
One of the more fruitful new research questions that have surfaced within the project concerns longitudinal changes in decision making. By extending the first DMC data collection with and additional test session (T6 of the Betula project) we will have the unique opportunity to investigate longitudinal effects of age on DMC, and perhaps even more important, to examine how long-term changes in demographic, biological and cogntive relate to decision making capacity in old age.

Another research stream of the Aging and Decision-making Competence project focused on the capacity of older adults to generate options in order to solve decision problems. This research question has been sparsely investigated in general, and almost ignored in older adults, despite the critical importance of these processes for real-world decision making.

We recently completed an individual differences study was carried out, comparing young and old adults (N = 340) on their capacity to generate decision-making options in relation to two ill-structured scenarios. The study investigated option generation capacity, analyzing its relationship with socio-demographic variables, domain experience and knowledge, ideational fluency. The results showed a dramatic decline in option generation performance in older adults (vs. younger adults) both at the group level and at the individual level in the two scenarios (-30%, -40%). Structural equation modeling showed that an important mediator of this age-related decline is a marked decrease in ideational fluency in older adults, while the clear age-related decline in cognitive ability does not seem to play a significant role. A more detailed analysis of performance is ongoing, with the aim of understanding if aging affects only the number of options generated or if it has also some influence on the originality, feasibility, utility, diversity, and categorical distribution of the generated options. This investigation will provide an in-depth analysis of option generation capacity in older adults, shedding light on this important (but neglected) aspect of decision-making competence.

Two most Important Publications
The most important publications of the project reflects the findings summarized above, and include:
Del Missier, F., Mäntylä, T., Hansson, P., Bruine de Bruin, W., Parker, A., & Nilsson, L-G. (2013). The multifold relationship between memory and decision making: An individual-differences study. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 39(5), 1344-1364.
Del Missier, F., Mäntylä, T., & Bruine de Bruin, W. (2012). Decision-making competence, executive functioning, and general cognitive abilities. Journal of Behavioral Decision Making, 25, 331-351.

Dissemination of Results from the Project
The research within the project has been published in prominent scientific journals. The results have also been reported at more prominent meetings in the field, including the conferences connected to Psychonomic Society, Society for Judgment and Decision Making and the European Society of Cognitive Psychology. We have also organized and contributed conference symposia, special issues and a book on aging and decision making. Finally, the research has been presented at a number of public presentations and seminars.

Publications

Del Missier, F., Mäntylä, T., & Nilsson, L. G. (in press). Aging, memory, and decision making. In T. M. Hess, C. E. Loeckenhoff & J.-N. Strough (Eds.), Aging and decision-making: empirical and applied perspectives. Elsevier Inc.
Del Missier F., Visentini, M., & Mäntylä, T. (in press). Option generation in decision making: Ideation beyond memory retrieval. Frontiers in Psychology.
Perego, E., Del Missier, F., & Bottiroli, S. (in press). Dubbing and subtitling in young and older adults: Cognitive and evaluative aspects. Studies in Translatology.
Del Missier, F., Mäntylä, T., Hansson, P., Bruine de Bruin, W., Parker, A., Nilsson, L-G. (2014). Unraveling the aging skein: Disentangling multiple age-related influences on decision making. Pending.
Del Missier, F., Mäntylä, T., Hansson, P., Bruine de Bruin, W., Parker, A., & Nilsson, L-G. (2013). The multifold relationship between memory and decision making: An individual-differences study. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 39, 1344-1364.
Todorov, I., Del Missier, F., & Mäntylä, T., (2014). Age-related differences in multiple task monitoring. PLOS One, 9, e107619.
Mäntylä, T., Still, J., Gullberg, S., & Del Missier, F. (2012). Decision making in adults with Attention-Deficit-Hyperactivity Disorder. Journal of Attention Disorders, 16(2), 164-173.
Bruine de Bruin, W., Del Missier, F., & Levin, I. P. (2012). Individual differences in decision-making competence. Special Issue. Journal of Behavioral Decision Making, 25, 329-330.
Del Missier, F., Mäntylä, T., & Bruine de Bruin, W. (2012). Decision-making competence, executive functioning, and general cognitive abilities. Journal of Behavioral Decision Making, 25, 331-351.
Crescentini, C., Marin, D., Del Missier, F., Biasutti, E., & Shallice, T. (2011). Interference from retrieval cues in Parkinson’s  disease. Neuropsychology, 25, 720-733.
Del Missier, F., Mäntylä, T., & Bruine de Bruin, W. (2010). Executive functions in decision making. Thinking & Reasoning, 16, 69-97.

Selected presentations
Del Missier, F., Visentini, M., Mäntylä, T.  (2013). Individual and age-related differences in decision structuring: The case of option generation. 24th SPUDM meeting.  Barcelona, Spain.
Del Missier, F., Mäntylä, T., Bruine de Bruin, W., Nilsson, L-G., (2013, July). Unraveling the aging skein: Disentangling multiple age-related influences on decision making. The 13th European Conference for Psychology, Stockholm, Sweden.
Del Missier, F., Bruine de Bruin, W., Nilsson, L-G., Parker, A., Mäntylä, T. (2012). The multifold relationship between memory and decision making: An individual-differences study. Society for Judgment and Decision Making, Minneapolis, MI.
Del Missier, F., Visentini, M., & Mäntylä, T. (2012). Individual and age-related differences in option generation. Society for Judgment and Decision Making), Minneapolis, MI.