EXPRESS: Decision-making and ageing: everyday life situations under risk and under ambiguity.

Cognitive modifications over ageing can affect decision making competence (DMC). As it is a core ability in autonomy preservation, our study aims to investigate its changes in old adults and to determine if they are linked to the deterioration of executive functions and working memory. For this purpose, 50 young adults and 50 old adults were assessed with executive, working memory and DMC tasks. The latter comprised the Iowa Gambling task (IGT) and a scenarii task based on daily life-inspired situations, under risk and under ambiguity conditions. Results revealed lower performances in old adults compared to young adults for updating, inhibition and working memory tasks. The IGT failed to distinguish the two groups of age, but the scenarii task did it, as young adults were more risk and ambiguity seekers than old adults. Moreover, updating and inhibition capacities appeared to influence DMC.