Trial reportProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America2013
Like cognitive function, decision making across the life span shows profound age-related changes.
Trial report in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 2013. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. An erratum has been issued. Cited by 108 papers, 3 of them syntheses that pooled it.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
108 citing papers in PubMed, 3 syntheses or guidelines pooled it, 289 citations in OpenAlex.
- Cognitive abilities affect decision errors but not risk preferences: A meta-analysis.Psychonomic bulletin & review · 2022Pooled it
- Mapping the knowledge domain of financial decision making: A scientometric and bibliometric study.Frontiers in psychology · 2022Pooled it
- Age differences in the effect of framing on risky choice: A meta-analysis.Psychology and aging · 2015Pooled it
- Propranolol reduces reference-dependence in intertemporal choice.Social cognitive and affective neuroscience · 2017Trial
- Objective Assessment of Financial Decision-Making With a Simulated Online Money Management Task in Older Adults: Protocol for a Prospective Observational Study.JMIR research protocols · 2026Article
- When effort fuels risk: Cognitive exertion increases risk-taking for gains but reduces it for losses.Cognitive, affective & behavioral neuroscience · 2026Article
- Age differences in susceptibility to stroke-related health misinformation on social media: the role of prior experience and corrective feedback.Frontiers in public health · 2026Article
- Divergent attitudes toward ambiguous and conflicting information.Scientific reports · 2025Article
- Positive risk taking across the world.Journal of research on adolescence : the official journal of the Society for Research on Adolescence · 2025Article
- Ecological Factors Influencing Decision-Making Among Middle-Aged and Older Adults: A Neurocognitive Approach.Cureus · 2025Article
- Modeling decision-making under uncertainty with qualitative outcomes.PLoS computational biology · 2025Article
- Choosing certainty over risk: Associations of PTSD symptom severity with memory sampling during experiential decision making.Journal of anxiety disorders · 2025Article
- Moderate stability of risk and ambiguity attitudes across quantitative and qualitative decisions.Scientific reports · 2025Article
- Influence of surprise on reinforcement learning in younger and older adults.PLoS computational biology · 2024Article
- Quantitative vs. Qualitative Outcomes: A Longitudinal Study of Risk and Ambiguity in Monetary and Medical Decision-Making.Research square · 2024Article
- Older adults select different but not simpler strategies than younger adults in risky choice.PLoS computational biology · 2024Article
- Differential impacts of healthy cognitive aging on directed and random exploration.Psychology and aging · 2024Article
- Unpacking workplace stress and forensic expert decision-making: From theory to practice.Forensic science international. Synergy · 2024Review
- Aberrant decision-making as a risk factor for falls in aging.Frontiers in aging neuroscience · 2024Review
- Parietal stimulation reverses age-related decline in exploration, learning, and decision-making.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2023Article
48 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.
Corrections and comments
- Erratum issued
Authors and funding
5 authors at 3 institutions in 2 countries.
Funding
Abstract
It has long been known that human cognitive function improves through young adulthood and then declines across the later life span. Here we examined how decision-making function changes across the life span by measuring risk and ambiguity attitudes in the gain and loss domains, as well as choice consistency, in an urban cohort ranging in age from 12 to 90 y. We identified several important age-related patterns in decision making under uncertainty: First, we found that healthy elders between the ages of 65 and 90 were strikingly inconsistent in their choices compared with younger subjects. Just as elders show profound declines in cognitive function, they also show profound declines in choice rationality compared with their younger peers. Second, we found that the widely documented phenomenon of ambiguity aversion is specific to the gain domain and does not occur in the loss domain, except for a slight effect in older adults. Finally, extending an earlier report by our group, we found that risk attitudes across the life span show an inverted U-shaped function; both elders and adolescents are more risk-averse than their midlife counterparts. Taken together, these characterizations of decision-making function across the life span in this urban cohort strengthen the conclusions of previous reports suggesting a profound impact of aging on cognitive function in this domain.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.