Dorien Bangma

SUMMARY | 265 Part I: General introduction Financial decision-making (FDM) capability is the ability to manage or direct the management of one’s finances. FDM capability can be determined by evaluating the financial competence of an individual (i.e., financial knowledge and judgmental abilities to make financial decisions). FDM capability is, however, also dependent on a person’s financial performance in everyday life and on related contextual factors. In order to make (clinical) decisions about the FDM capability of an individual, the examination of both financial competence and financial performance is therefore required. For this, new FDM tests and questionnaires ( chapter 2 ) have been developed which can be used to comprehensively assess different components of FDM capability (i.e., financial competence, financial performance and contextual factors). The aim of the current thesis is to systematically and comprehensively study the FDM capability of individuals with and without cognitive dysfunctions. The thesis focuses on the effects of normal aging on FDM capability and explores the FDM capability of individuals with neurodegenerative diseases (NDDs) and adults with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). Furthermore, the influence of several contextual factors, including cognition, on FDM are evaluated. Part II: FDM capability in relation to normal and abnormal aging As a result of age-related cognitive decline, older individuals are more vulnerable to experience problems with the deliberative processing of information and might therefore have more difficulties with some aspects of FDM compared to younger individuals. Nevertheless, the affective processing of information, which also relies on experience and learning, remains unaffected with normal aging and might result in similar of even better performances on some other aspects of FDM with advancing age. The study presented in chapter 3 focuses on this topic and evaluates the effects of normal aging on FDM capability. By evaluating the performances of a large sample (n = 180, age range 18 - 87 years) on our FDM test battery and on several standard neuropsychological tests, it was found that a complex and cognitive demanding aspect of FDM (i.e., the ability to make financial decisions based on specific decision rules) was indeed negatively influenced by normal aging. Based on mediation analyses, numeracy and planning abilities were found to partly explain the effects of normal aging on this aspect of FDM. Furthermore, an advancing age was associated with a lower tendency to buy on impulse. Especially the affective component (and not the cognitive component) of impulsive buying was related to age. These results were confirmed by internal (i.e., bootstrap resampling analyses) as well as external validation (i.e., evaluation of a second, independent sample) analyses. The ability to make decisions with implications for the future and emotional decision-making or risk-taking were also found to be either positively and negatively related to age, respectively. However, the external consistency of these latter results could not be confirmed. On all other aspects of FDM assessed (i.e., financial competence, FDM capacity, the use of financial decision styles, and intuitive and deliberative FDM) no influence of age was found. Based on this study ( chapter 3 ), it was concluded that normal aging influences some aspects of FDM capability (both positively and negatively), while other aspects appear to be unaffected by normal aging.