Social-networks use as adaptive or maladaptive strategy for coping with stress.

Social networks are frequently used to distract, procrastinate, or cope with stress. We aimed to investigate how (problematic) social-networks use affect stress perception in interaction with different stress recovery conditions. A total of 104 participants were randomly assigned to one of four groups.

Decision-making, cognitive functions, impulsivity, and media multitasking expectancies in high versus low media multitaskers.

In several studies, individuals who reported to frequently multitask with different media displayed reduced cognitive performance, for example in fluid intelligence and executive functioning. These cognitive functions are relevant for making advantageous decisions under both objective risk (requiring reflection and strategical planning) and ambiguous risk (requiring learning from feedback). Thus, compared to low media multitaskers (LMMs), high media multitaskers (HMMs) may perform worse in both types of decision situations.

Country and Sex Differences in Decision Making Under Uncertainty and Risk.

Whether males and females differ in decision-making remains highly debatable. However, a male advantage in decision making is observed in animal as well as human models of the iowa gambling task (IGT), and, in case of the latter, the difference is observed across a wide range of age groups. It is unclear if these sex differences on the IGT are malleable to environmental influences such as sociocultural factors.

Decision support in patients with mild Alzheimer's disease.

Introduction: Making advantageous decisions is a key competence of individuals of all ages. However, previous studies reported a reduction of this competence in patients with neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer's disease, which is explained by impairments of executive functions such as cognitive flexibility or working memory. While previous findings from healthy participants with reduced executive functions showed that support can improve decision making under risk, the study at hand aimed to investigate this effect in patients with mild Alzheimer's disease (mAD).

Risk approximation in decision making: approximative numeric abilities predict advantageous decisions under objective risk.

Many decision situations in everyday life involve mathematical considerations. In decisions under objective risk, i.e.

Decision Making under Ambiguity and Objective Risk in Higher Age - A Review on Cognitive and Emotional Contributions.

The ability of decision making plays a highly relevant role in our survival, but is adversely affected during the process of aging. The present review aims to provide a better understanding of age-related differences in decision making and the role of cognitive and emotional factors in this context. We reviewed the literature about age-effects on decision-making performance, focusing on decision making under ambiguous and objective risk.

Are you able not to react to what you hear? Inhibition behavior measured with an auditory Go/NoGo paradigm.

In everyday life people have to attend to, react to, or inhibit reactions to visual and acoustic cues. These abilities are frequently measured with Go/NoGo tasks using visual stimuli. However, these abilities have rarely been examined with auditory cues.

One executive function never comes alone: monitoring and its relation to working memory, reasoning, and different executive functions.

Monitoring is involved in many daily tasks and is described in several theoretical approaches of executive functioning. This study investigated the relative relationship of cognitive processes that are theoretically relevant to monitoring, such as concept formation, reasoning, working memory, and general cognitive control functions. Data from 699 participants who performed the Balanced Switching Task, aiming at capturing monitoring, were used.

Age-related variance in decisions under ambiguity is explained by changes in reasoning, executive functions, and decision-making under risk.

Previous literature has explained older individuals' disadvantageous decision-making under ambiguity in the Iowa Gambling Task (IGT) by reduced emotional warning signals preceding decisions. We argue that age-related reductions in IGT performance may also be explained by reductions in certain cognitive abilities (reasoning, executive functions). In 210 participants (18-86 years), we found that the age-related variance on IGT performance occurred only in the last 60 trials.

Self-reported strategies in decisions under risk: role of feedback, reasoning abilities, executive functions, short-term-memory, and working memory.

In decisions under objective risk conditions information about the decision options' possible outcomes and the rules for outcomes' occurrence are provided. Thus, deciders can base decision-making strategies on probabilistic laws. In many laboratory decision-making tasks, choosing the option with the highest winning probability in all trials (=maximization strategy) is probabilistically regarded the most rational behavior.

Decision Making Under Objective Risk Conditions-a Review of Cognitive and Emotional Correlates, Strategies, Feedback Processing, and External Influences.

While making decisions under objective risk conditions, the probabilities of the consequences of the available options are either provided or calculable. Brand et al. (Neural Networks 19:1266-1276, 2006) introduced a model describing the neuro-cognitive processes involved in such decisions.

Monitoring supports performance in a dual-task paradigm involving a risky decision-making task and a working memory task.

Performing two cognitively demanding tasks at the same time is known to decrease performance. The current study investigates the underlying executive functions of a dual-tasking situation involving the simultaneous performance of decision making under explicit risk and a working memory task. It is suggested that making a decision and performing a working memory task at the same time should particularly require monitoring-an executive control process supervising behavior and the state of processing on two tasks.

Among three different executive functions, general executive control ability is a key predictor of decision making under objective risk.

Executive functioning is supposed to have an important role in decision making under risk. Several studies reported that more advantageous decision-making behavior was accompanied by better performance in tests of executive functioning and that the decision-making process was accompanied by activations in prefrontal and subcortical brain regions associated with executive functioning. However, to what extent different components of executive functions contribute to decision making is still unclear.

A versatile task for assessing decision-making abilities: the truck dispatcher framework.

In neuropsychological decision-making research, several different tasks are used to measure decision-making competences in patients and healthy study participants. Unfortunately, the existing tasks are often inflexible for modification, use different scenarios, and include several gambling cues. Therefore, comparisons between participants' performances in different tasks are difficult.

Know the risk, take the win: how executive functions and probability processing influence advantageous decision making under risk conditions.

Recent models on decision making under risk conditions have suggested that numerical abilities are important ingredients of advantageous decision-making performance, but empirical evidence is still limited. The results of our first study show that logical reasoning and basic mental calculation capacities predict ratio processing and that ratio processing predicts decision making under risk. In the second study, logical reasoning together with executive functions predicted probability processing (numeracy and probability knowledge), and probability processing predicted decision making under risk.

Developmental changes in decision making under risk: The role of executive functions and reasoning abilities in 8- to 19-year-old decision makers.

Previous studies have shown that children and adolescents often tend toward risky decisions despite explicit knowledge about the potential negative consequences. This phenomenon has been suggested to be associated with the immaturity of brain areas involved in cognitive control functions. Particularly, "frontal lobe functions," such as executive functions and reasoning, mature until young adulthood and are thought to be involved in age-related changes in decision making under explicit risk conditions.

Decision-making impairments in patients with Wilson's disease.

Wilson's disease (WD) causes deposition of copper, mainly in the basal ganglia. One consequence of deposition seems to be impairment of executive functions, which could cause problems in decision making. In 30 WD patients and 30 healthy controls (HCs), we examined decision making under risk in the Game of Dice Task, and we assessed working memory and executive functions.

Interactions of age and cognitive functions in predicting decision making under risky conditions over the life span.

Little is known about how normal healthy aging affects decision-making competence. In this study 538 participants (age 18-80 years) performed the Game of Dice Task (GDT). Subsamples also performed the Iowa Gambling Task as well as tasks measuring logical thinking and executive functions.

Anchor effects in decision making can be reduced by the interaction between goal monitoring and the level of the decision maker's executive functions.

Models of decision making postulate that interactions between contextual conditions and characteristics of the decision maker determine decision-making performance. We tested this assumption by using a possible positive contextual influence (goals) and a possible negative contextual influence (anchor) in a risky decision-making task (Game of Dice Task, GDT). In this task, making advantageous choices is well known to be closely related to a specific decision maker variable: the individual level of executive functions.

Executive functions, categorization of probabilities, and learning from feedback: what does really matter for decision making under explicit risk conditions?

In two experiments with healthy subjects, we used the Game of Dice Task (GDT), the Probability-Associated Gambling (PAG) task, the Iowa Gambling Task (IGT), and executive-function and logical thinking tasks to shed light on the underlying processes of decision making under risk. Results indicate that handling probabilities, as in the PAG task, is an important ingredient of GDT performance. Executive functions and logical thinking also play major roles in deciding in the GDT.