Dorien Bangma

FDM AND NORMAL AGING | 39 Introduction During adulthood, most people make financial decisions. Some of these decisions are age or life stage dependent, such as buying a house or saving for retirement, while other decisions occur throughout adulthood, such as buying groceries and paying bills. Financial decision- making (FDM) is thus necessary in multiple situations and is crucial for independent living. FDM requires the integrity of cognition (Glimcher, 2014) and appears to be vulnerable to cognitive changes and dysfunctioning of especially the prefrontal cortex (Kennerley & Walton, 2011; Krawczyk, 2002). Consequently, it is not surprising that impairments in FDM are found in patients with different brain pathologies, such as patients with Alzheimer’s disease, mild cognitive impairment and Parkinson’s disease (Kershaw & Webber, 2008; Loewenstein et al., 1989; Marson et al., 2000; Martin et al., 2013; Pereira, Yassuda, et al., 2010; Pirogovsky et al., 2014; Triebel et al., 2009). Normal aging is, however, also accompanied by structural and functional changes of the prefrontal cortex (Dennis & Cabeza, 2008; Maillet & Rajah, 2013). These age-related changes might result in a decreased memory, attention and executive functioning (Braver & West, 2008; Denburg & Hedgcock, 2015) and consequently in deficits of FDM in older individuals. Previous studies have shown that deliberative information processing is essential for decision-making. Deliberative information processing can be defined as a rational manner of manipulating information that is needed to come to a decision (e.g., Peters et al., 2007). Deliberative information processing is thought to rely strongly on working memory capacity and related cognitive functions (Evans, 2008). Indeed, previous research indicates that deliberative information processes are less efficient with advancing age due to an age-related cognitive decline in processing speed, short- and long-term memory, working memory, attention, inhibition and reasoning (Braver & West, 2008; Denburg & Hedgcock, 2015; Salthouse, 1996; Salthouse & Meinz, 1995). As a result, older adults evaluate less information before making a decision (Mather, 2006) and have more difficulties with rather complex decision-making (Bruine de Bruin et al., 2007, 2012) than younger individuals. Furthermore, in de context of FDM, also numeracy abilities, independent of age, education level and other cognitive functions, are thought to play an important role (Chen et al., 2014; Reyna et al., 2009; Sherod et al., 2009; Wood & McHugh, 2013). Besides deliberative information processes, affective processes were also found to play a role in decision-making (e.g., Loewenstein et al., 2001, 2015). Affective processing relies on personal experience and prior learning on how to deal with certain decision-making situations (Peters et al., 2007). Not only integral affect (i.e., the feelings or emotions towards a problem or decision), but also incidental affect (i.e., the emotional status, unrelated to the problem or decision, while making a decision) are related to affective processing and have an influence on decision-making (Peters et al., 2007). It has been suggested that these affective processes remain unaffected or even improve with advancing age (Li et al., 2004; Mikels et al., 2013; Peters et al., 2007). Furthermore, also personal experience in and knowledge about (financial) decision-making (e.g., the experience with paying bills or buying or selling property) expand with advancing age (Hess, 2015; Peters et al., 2007). Affective processing and personal