Age Effects on Decision-Making, Drift Diffusion Model
Zahra Kavian Kimia Hajisadeghi Yashar Rezazadeh Mehrbod Faraji Reza Ebrahimpour
Training can improve human decision-making performance. After several
training sessions, a person can quickly and accurately complete a task.
However, decision-making is always a trade-off between accuracy and response
time. Factors such as age and drug abuse can affect the decision-making
process. This study examines how training can improve the performance of
different age groups in completing a random dot motion (RDM) task. The
participants are divided into two groups: old and young. They undergo a
three-phase training and then repeat the same RDM task. The hierarchical
drift-diffusion model analyzes the subjects' responses and determines how the
model's parameters change after training for both age groups. The results show
that after training, the participants were able to accumulate sensory
information faster, and the model drift rate increased. However, their decision
boundary decreased as they became more confident and had a lower
decision-making threshold. Additionally, the old group had a higher boundary
and lower drift rate in both pre and post-training, and there was less
difference between the two group parameters after training.