Dorien Bangma

160 | CHAPTER 7 are suggested to be involved in general decision-making: an affective/experiential processing of information relying on affect or intuition and deliberative/analytic processing of information relying on cognitive control (see Evans (2008) for review). It is suggested that decision-making requires the input and integration of both systems (Kahneman, 2003; Peters et al., 2007). Poor decision-making of adults with ADHD appears to be particularly evident in situations requiring a high cognitive control and it has been suggested that poor decision-making is mediated by impairments of working memory or response inhibition (Mäntylä et al., 2012). This is consistent with the impairments in executive functioning that are often found in adults with ADHD (Boonstra et al., 2005, 2010; Fuermaier et al., 2015; Hervey et al., 2004; Matt Alderson et al., 2013) and corresponds with the view that ADHD can be described as a disorder of cognitive dysregulation (Sonuga-Barke, 2003). However, following the argumentation of the dual-pathway model of ADHD, ADHD can also be described as a disorder of motivational- affective dysregulation (Shaw et al., 2014; Sonuga-Barke, 2003). In the context of general decision-making, ADHD has been linked to problems with reward processing and delay aversion which might result in impulsivity and risk taking (Groen et al., 2013; Luman et al., 2005; Scheres et al., 2013; Sonuga-Barke, 2003). However, these problems appear to be less evident in adults with ADHD (Groen et al., 2013; Mowinckel et al., 2015). In conclusion, adults with ADHD seem to be vulnerable to problems with FDM. Research on FDM in adults with ADHD is, however, very limited and most studies applied self-report measures and interviews and included relatively young and predominately male participants (Altszuler et al., 2016; Barkley et al., 2006; Barkley & Fischer, 2010; Das et al., 2012). Moreover, studies that focused on general decision-making in patients with ADHD used standardized but context independent tests and, therefore, do not allow conclusions about FDM. The present study is the first study that explores FDM abilities of adults with ADHD compared to healthy controls by including participants with a broad age range and by using subjective as well as objective measures of FDM. For this purpose, a recently developed comprehensive objective and standardized test battery will be used assessing multiple aspects of FDM (i.e., financial competence, financial decision-making capacity, financial decision styles, ability to apply rules, decisions with implications for the future, impulsive buying tendency and emotional decision-making; Bangma et al., 2017). Furthermore, cognitive functioning of adults with ADHD and healthy controls and the associations between cognition and the ability to make financial decisions will be evaluated. Due to the scarcity of research on FDM in adults with ADHD, it is difficult to formulate well-founded hypotheses. Nevertheless, based on the few studies reporting poorer money management of young adults with ADHD, it is expected that adults with ADHD have a less optimal financial situation (e.g., have more often debts or save less often money for the future) than healthy controls which may be due to adults with ADHD also having more difficulties with FDM than healthy controls.