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).

Approximate Number Processing Skills Contribute to Decision Making Under Objective Risk: Interactions With Executive Functions and Objective Numeracy.

Research on the cognitive abilities involved in decision making has shown that, under objective risk conditions (i.e., when explicit information about possible outcomes and risks is available), superior decisions are especially predicted by executive functions and exact number processing skills, also referred to as objective numeracy.

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.