Researchers
Laura L. Carstensen (Principal Mentor) - Stanford University
Brian Knutson - Assistant Professor of Psychology, Stanford School of Medicine

This study will validate online self-report measures of affective forecasting during a monetary incentive delay task (MID) with psychophysiological recordings of arousal and valence using skin conductance and facial electromyography, respectively. Samples of both younger and older adults will provide self-report probes during half of the trials, and psychophysiological recordings will be taken for the other half of the trials. Half of these subjects will also undergo functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) scanning while participating in the MID task.

It is expected that younger adults will show errors in affective forecasting of arousal for anticipation but not of valence for incentive outcomes. It is also predicted that anticipation of gains will activate the ventral striatum, which will be correlated with psychophysiological indices of arousal and positive valence. A comparison of younger and older adults will demonstrate whether affective forecasting improves with age/experience, which will help to understand how older adults make long-term choices and how to optimize those choices.

This study is a seed project for the Center on the Demography and Economics of Health and Aging.

Contact
Nomita Divi