Schedule of Events | Symposia

Brain signal variability predicts age-related shift in Believer-vs-Empiricist auditory decision style

Poster Session B - Sunday, March 30, 2025, 8:00 – 10:00 am EDT, Back Bay Ballroom/Republic Ballroom

Niels Kloosterman¹ (n.kloosterman@uni-luebeck.de), Mohsen Alavash¹, Malte Wöstmann¹, Jonas Obleser¹; ¹Universität zu Lübeck

Introduction: As a corollary of the predictive coding framework, individuals might emphasize either prior beliefs or empirical evidence when making decisions. This potentially results in more stubborn ("Believer") versus more perception-oriented ("Empiricist") decision styles, respectively. Recent evidence suggests an Empiricist-to-Believer shift during ageing, in line with commonly observed age-related reductions in cognitive performance and brain signal variability. Here, we asked whether decision-making style can be directly linked to ageing and brain signal variability. Methods: During electroencephalography (EEG), 32 young (18-32 years) and 34 older adults (52-74 years) performed an auditory discrimination task in which they decided whether a to-be-attended two-tone sequence ascended or descended in pitch. Participants also indicated confidence, allowing decision style assessment through signal-detection-theoretic (SDT) measures of metacognitive sensitivity (Type-II d′) and metacognitive bias (Type-II criterion). For younger adults, we predicted higher metacognitive sensitivity and less metacognitive bias. For older adults, we predicted the opposite. We quantified brain signal variability using time-resolved, multi-scale entropy. Results: Young, but not older adults indeed showed metacognitive sensitivity (Type-II d′=0.71 vs. –0.02), whereas only the older group showed a strong metacognitive bias (Type-II criterion=–4.1 vs. 0.58; Age-SDT interaction F(1,64)=19.1, p<0.001, two-way ANOVA). This confirms an age-related Empiricist-to-Believer shift. The young group showed overall higher EEG entropy. Young participants with increased entropy during tone presentation in lateral frontal regions showed better metacognition, and increased entropy in both groups predicted reductions in metacognitive bias. Conclusion: Increased brain signal variability in older age might contribute to preserving an Empiricist decision style.

Topic Area: THINKING: Decision making