Sharon A. Mutter, Ph.D. The research conducted in the Cognition Laboratory focuses primarily on age-related changes in cognitive processes. At the present time, we are investigating whether older adults' judgment and decision making skills differ from those of young adults. At a very basic level, making a judgment or decision involves obtaining information and processing this information to reach a conclusion.
Memory can also play an important role in the judgment process.
For example, information that is pertinent to a judgment may be present in the immediate environment, but is more often retrieved from memory. We are studying how this pattern of intact and impaired memory affects older adults' judgment and decision making ability. Findings from our recent experiments indicate that when a judgment task requires minimal involvement of memory or when the task draws on memory processes that are unaffected by increasing age, older adults perform as accurately as young adults. On the other hand, older adults' judgments are less accurate and more biased than those of young adults when a judgment task involves memory processes that decline with age. Illusory correlation and group impression formation in young and older adults.