认知老化对于老年人决策过程的影响:动机的调节作用

有关老化和决策制定的研究并没有发现一致的年龄差异。从决策过程的角度,论述了老化对于决策制定的多层面影响。从认知层面来讲,流体认知能力的衰减会使老年人在决策制定前搜索更少的信息,使用非补偿性策略,基于属性进行信息搜索和比较;晶体认知能力的相对保持则在一定情况下弥补了这种消极影响;从动机层面来讲,关注情绪管理目标的老年人会倾向于寻求更多积极的信息,为了避免权衡诱发的消极情绪而更多地使用非补偿性策略。动机对于认知老化的消极影响有调节作用。具体来说,社会情绪选择理论和选择性投入假设认为,当决策任务符合老年人的社会目标,即情绪管理目标时,能够激活老年人投入认知资源的动机,从而缓解认知资源的衰减对于老年人决策表现的消极影响。未来的研究需要通过实验设计进一步探索动机与认知的交互作用,将多种过程追踪技术结合起来,明晰动机和认知能力在老年人决策制定中的作用。另外考虑到在社会目标方面的年龄差异,对于老年人决策质量的衡量应该更加注重主观决策质量。

Older Adults' Decision Process in the Context of Cognitive Aging: Motivation as a Moderator

Research on aging and decision making has yielded inconsistent results. We provide a review of research on the multifaceted impact of aging on decision making from the decision processes perspective. When considering the cognitive decline, older adults examine fewer pieces of information, use noncompensatory strategies and more likely to engage in an attribute-based search before making a decision. When considering the the change of motivation, older adults focus on the adjustment of emotion, and then tend to search more positive information and use noncompensatory strategies to avoid negative emotion induced by explicit trade-offs between features. The motivation can mediate the negative influence of cognitive aging on older adults' decision making. Specifically, the Socioemotional Selectivity Theory and Selective Engagement Hypothesis assume that decision task accord with social goal of older adults will increase the motivation to devote the cognitive resources, and then the older adults' decision performance will not be hampered by the limited cognitive resources. The future studies may conduct the precise experimental studies to further clarify whether or not the interaction between cognition and motivation may influence the older adults' decision-making performance and how. The comprehensive use of process tracing technologies will help avoid the defect of single technology. Considering the age difference of social goals, we should focus on the subjective quality when assessing the quality of older adults' decisions.