The effects of normal aging on multiple aspects of financial decision-making

OBJECTIVES

Financial decision-making (FDM) is crucial for independent living. Due to cognitive decline that accompanies normal aging, older adults might have difficulties in some aspects of FDM. However, an improved knowledge, personal experience and affective decision-making, which are also related to normal aging, may lead to a stable or even improved age-related performance in some other aspects of FDM. Therefore, the present explorative study examines the effects of normal aging on multiple aspects of FDM.

METHODS

One-hundred and eighty participants (range 18-87 years) were assessed with eight FDM tests and several standard neuropsychological tests. Age effects were evaluated using hierarchical multiple regression analyses. The validity of the prediction models was examined by internal validation (i.e. bootstrap resampling procedure) as well as external validation on another, independent, sample of participants (n = 124). Multiple regression and correlation analyses were applied to investigate the mediation effect of standard measures of cognition on the observed effects of age on FDM.

RESULTS

On a relatively basic level of FDM (e.g., paying bills or using FDM styles) no significant effects of aging were found. However more complex FDM, such as making decisions in accordance with specific rules, becomes more difficult with advancing age. Furthermore, an older age was found to be related to a decreased sensitivity for impulsive buying. These results were confirmed by the internal and external validation analyses. Mediation effects of numeracy and planning were found to explain parts of the association between one aspect of FDM (i.e. Competence in decision rules) and age; however, these cognitive domains were not able to completely explain the relation between age and FDM.

CONCLUSION

Normal aging has a negative influence on a complex aspect of FDM, however, other aspects appear to be unaffected by normal aging or improve.

Decision-making in Cognitively Unimpaired Illiterate and Low-educated Older Women: Results on the Iowa Gambling Task

OBJECTIVE

This study investigated the pattern of decision-making (DM) on the Iowa Gambling Task (IGT) in a sample of Portuguese speaking healthy older women in Brazil with limited education: illiterate, 1-2 years, and 3-4 years of schooling.

METHODS

Around 164 non-demented community-dwelling women participated in the study. Among them 60 were illiterate, 52 had 1-2 years of schooling and 52 had 3-4 years of schooling. Participants completed the instruments: Brief Cognitive Screening Battery (BCSB), Mini-Mental State Examination, Verbal Fluency Test (animal category), Clock Drawing Test, Geriatric Depression Scale, Geriatric Anxiety Inventory, Digit Span Forward and Backward, Raven's Coloured Progressive Matrices, Wisconsin Card Sorting Test, and IGT.

RESULTS

The three education groups were equivalent as to age, number of diseases, medications taken daily, depression, and anxiety symptoms. In the IGT the literate older adults made more advantageous choices than the illiterate and IGT performance improved linearly with higher levels of education. IGT performance correlated significantly with all cognitive test scores with the exception of the memorization of the pictures on the BCSB.

CONCLUSION

The results suggested that education influences IGT performance, with worse scores among the illiterate. Results may be used by clinicians to interpret IGT performance among seniors with low literacy levels.

The Iowa Gambling Task (IGT) in Brazil: a systematic review

Background: Decision-making is a complex, multidimensional cognitive function that requires the choice between two or more options and also the predictive analysis of its consequences. One of the tools most widely used to assess decision-making in neuropsychological research is the Iowa Gambling Task (IGT). Objective: To conduct a systematic review of articles reporting empirical IGT studies based in Brazil. Method: Articles were obtained from multiple journal databases including ISI Web of Knowledge, Scopus, SciELO, LILACS, and Scholar Google. Results: Thirty-six studies were included in this review and divided into four categories according to main subject matter (psychiatry & personality; demographic & cultural variables; medical/clinic; and psychometric properties & test administration standardization). In general, there was a significant growth in research employing IGT (Χ² = 17.6, df = 5, p = 0.0003), but this growth was restricted to a few geographic areas of Brazil. The psychiatry & personality subject matter was the most abundant, accounting for 14 publications (39% of the total sample). Conclusion: Since its first adaptation to Brazilian Portuguese in 2006, a growing interest in decision-making as measured by the IGT can be observed, with psychiatry & personality topics representing a large portion of the scientific inquiry to date. Nevertheless, in order to extend the initial results of Brazilian IGT decision-making research, more studies are necessary - across a more diverse range of topics, including demographic & cultural variables, and psychometric properties & test administration standardization, the areas least studied -, as is the dissemination of the IGT to more regions of the country.

Determination of Differential Bundle Functioning (DBF) of Numeracy and Literacy Tests Administered to Grade 3 Learners in South Africa

The study is based on data gathered for the Assessment Modelling Initiative (AMI), part of the District Development Support Programme (DDSP) project conducted by the Human Sciences Research Council (HSRC) in 2002, in conjunction with the Department of Education (DoE) and provincial departments of education of the Eastern Cape, KwaZulu-Natal, Northern Cape, and Limpopo. The project was funded by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) and managed by Research Triangle Institute (RTI) International. The Joint Education Trust (JET) developed the Grade 3 numeracy test and adapted the literacy test from the International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement (IEA) survey. The aim of AMI was to develop assessment materials in literacy and numeracy for learners in Grade 3 that could be used by teachers in classroom instruction and for learner assessment. The purpose of the analysis was to investigate Differential Item Functioning (DIF) and Differential Bundle Functioning (DBF) in these tests and to determine item difficulty, discrimination, reliability, and evidence of construct validity. Participants were 4,000 male and 4,000 female Grade 3 learners selected using the stratified random sampling method from 13,425 Grade 3 learners who participated in the DDSP project. The Simultaneous Item Bias Test (SIBTEST) was used for detecting DIF and bias. SIBTEST was also used to detect bundle bias or DBF. There were significant gender differences in mean scores of both numeracy and literacy tests. Female participants performed consistently better than male participants in both tests. Both the numeracy and the literacy tests possessed appropriate psychometric properties of difficulty, discrimination, reliability, and some evidence of construct validity. Significant estimates of beta (test for DIF and DBF) were obtained for literacy but not for numeracy. The literacy test exhibited DIF at item level and DBF at bundle level. Although a myriad of factors could have caused DIF and DBF, the use of tests translated into various languages may have introduced bias. Further analysis should be done to identify other factors that could have caused DIF and DBF.