The New York Times-20080129-Growing Older Is Found To Hurt Decision Making

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Growing Older Is Found To Hurt Decision Making

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For the especially unscrupulous con artist, the elderly are a tempting target. Now researchers have confirmed in the lab what frauds already knew instinctively: as they grow older, even people who seem perfectly on top of things may have trouble making good decisions.

The researchers based their findings on a series of tests given to two groups of healthy people, one ages 26 to 55, the other 56 to 85. The goal was to see how well the older volunteers used the skills often demanded of them when making decisions in real life about activities like investments, insurance and estate planning.

Such decisions would be a challenge even for young adults, the researchers note in the current Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences. But when age is taken into account, they said, along with the abundance of shady marketing schemes, the challenge becomes even greater.

Even someone with high intellect and good memory, the study said, may be undergoing changes in the prefrontal part of the brain that affects behavior. The first manifestation of this cognitive decline may be exercising poor judgment and decision making in many important real-life matters, the study said.

The researchers, led by Natalie L. Denburg of the University of Iowa, used a gambling-style test in which people draw from four different decks of cards. Two decks, not to mince words, are for suckers. They give short-term rewards but long-term losses. The other two decks do the opposite.

Most people draw a lot from the bad decks first and switch. In the study, many of the older participants stuck with the bad decks.

[Illustration]DRAWING (DRAWING BY STUART GOLDENBERG)