Chair of Lifespan Developmental Neuroscience, Faculty of Psychology, Technische Universität Dresden, Dresden, Germany.
Chair of Methods of Psychology and Cognitive Modelling, Faculty of Psychology, Technische Universität Dresden, Dresden, Germany.
Sci Rep. 2022 Jul 5;12(1):11381. doi: 10.1038/s41598-022-15432-y.
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.
实证研究表明，通过视觉增强奖励概率的显著性，可以减轻价值比较的认知需求，并改善老年人的基于价值的决策。在本研究中，我们使用了一个包含起始时间参数的时变漂移扩散模型，以更好地理解（1）提高奖励概率的显著性如何影响基于价值的决策的动态，以及（2）这些影响如何与年龄相互作用。我们在一项混合彩票选择任务中考察了年轻和老年成年人的选择。在一部分试验中，我们使用颜色编码方案突出显示奖励概率的显著性，作为决策辅助。结果表明，在对照试验中，与年轻成年人相比，老年成年人更早地开始将概率与大小信息进行比较，但他们的证据积累过程对奖励概率的敏感性低于年轻成年人。这可能表明，在老年时期，基于价值的决策中存在更嘈杂和更随机的信息积累过程。决策辅助增加了概率信息对两个年龄组的证据积累率的影响，但没有改变两组中概率与大小的积累相对时间。
