THE IMPACT OF SELF-RELEVANCE AND TASK COMPLEXITY ON INFORMATION SEARCH DURING DECISION-MAKING

摘要

Cognitive declines may negatively impact older adults to systematically search information, which might lead them to make decisions more based on the presence or absence of values on important dimensions (i.e., noncompensatory strategies) rather than consider all the information associated with each alternative (i.e., compensatory strategies). However, draw from selective engagement, self-relevance would increase older adults’ motivation to engage in the task, which might result in more search behaviors. To investigate the impact of self-relevance and task complexity on information search during decision-making, the present study adopted a 2 (age: young, old) × 2 (self-relevance: low, high) × 2 (task complexity: simple, complexity) mixed design. We examined information search behaviors in 60 younger and 60 older adults using a process-tracing procedure with 6 decision matrices. Decision tasks varied in complexity, and half of them were considered as relevant to older than to younger adults, whereas the opposite would be true for the others. Results showed that older adults were more likely than younger adults to use compensatory strategies, and spent more time and searched more information during decision making. With self-relevance increasing, older adults used less compensatory strategies, while younger adults changed strategies from noncompensatory to compensatory strategies. Increased in task complexity result in more information search, more time on decision-making, but adults of all ages still tend to use compensatory strategies. The results suggest that self-relevance may be more important than task complexity to determine older adults’ information search behaviors during decision-making.