Financial Cognition and Decision-Making in Aging: Cognitive Assessment and Interventions

Economic decision-making in older adults carries wide-ranging personal and social implications. Aging is associated with changes in core cognitive functions, including executive functioning, numeracy, and memory, which shape how older adults manage budgets, evaluate financial risk, and adapt to complex financial products. These changes occur along a continuum, from the general effects of cognitive aging in healthy older adults to the more pronounced decline seen in those with neurocognitive disorders, and both ends of this continuum affect vulnerability to financial fraud and impaired financial decision-making.The cognitive mechanisms underlying economic decision-making, including numerical reasoning, executive function, judgment, and insight, are shaped by cultural context, yet the protocols developed to assess them remain inconsistent across countries. Several Western countries have proposed protocols that incorporate cognitive, emotional, and behavioral functioning alongside standardized cognitive assessments, but these approaches vary widely, reflecting diverse cultural values, the variable availability of standardized tools, and limited attention to the ecological validity of these instruments when applied across different cultural contexts. This leaves a clear gap in globally applicable, ecologically valid frameworks for evaluating economic decision-making and vulnerability to financial abuse across both healthy and pathological aging.One promising avenue to address this gap is the cross-cultural adaptation of existing tools, including tests, questionnaires, and interviews, alongside replication studies on economic decision-making conducted across different languages, countries, and populations, encompassing both older persons with diverse diagnoses and healthy older adults.This Research Topic aims to gather contributions that advance our understanding of how age, cognition, affect, and neurophysiological states influence economic decision-making, including decision-making under uncertainty, in both healthy and pathological aging. Studies examining current assessment protocols, the mechanisms, efficacy, and implementation of financial interventions, and the comparative performance of these approaches across diverse cultural contexts and populations are particularly encouraged, including which assessment methods best support financial literacy outcomes in aging populations.We welcome a range of methodological approaches, including cognitive and behavioral tests, decision-making paradigms under uncertainty, biological biomarkers (EEG, fMRI, DTI), psychological interventions, randomized controlled trials, longitudinal and cross-sectional studies, systematic reviews, meta-analyses, and rigorous quantitative, qualitative, and mixed-methods research.Topics of interest include:- The general, non-pathological effects of cognitive aging on economic decision-making, alongside the effects of neurodegenerative and other neurocognitive disorders.- Methodological and ethical considerations in the assessment of economic decision-making in aging.- Cross-cultural perspectives on economic decision-making and the ecological validity of assessment tools used across cultural contexts.- Environmental determinants and their effects on economic decision-making in aging.- Moderating variables (age, gender, socioeconomic status, literacy) and biomarkers, including genetic factors framed in relation to risk of financial illiteracy rather than as standalone predictors.- Interventions to maintain or improve economic decision-making and replication studies.- Interventions to prevent financial abuse and support older persons.- Digital and hybrid interventions for economic decision-making in older persons.- Decision-making under uncertainty and behavioral economics experiments focusing on older persons.- Psychometric validation of financial capacity and decision-making instruments across different languages and cultures, including comparison of which approaches yield the best financial literacy outcomes cross-culturally.- Quantitative, qualitative, and mixed-methods studies. Topic editors: Vaitsa Giannouli, Alexa Wheeler Source: https://www.frontiersin.org/research-topics/85627/financial-cognition-and-decision-making-in-aging-cognitive-assessment-and-interventions