Adaptive decision making and aging

The notion of ecological rationality sees successful decision making as the product of the fit between particular strategies and the appropriate decision tasks. But how does aging affect the ability to adapt and execute specific strategies? We provide a review of research on aging and adaptive strategy use in different domains, including memory and arithmetic computation, and draw parallels to extant findings from decision-making research. Overall, results suggest that age-related changes in cognitive control and reward processing affect both strategy selection and execution processes across domains. We discuss these findings in light of the ecological rationality framework, which suggests that simple strategies can work well in many natural environments, and that age-related deficits in strategy selection and reliance on simpler strategies may not translate into bad decisions. Finally, we argue for research on the statistical structure of natural environments to predict potential effects of aging on real-world decisions.