Behavioral analysis of habit formation in modern slot machine gambling

Ferrari, Mario A.; Limbrick‐Oldfield, Eve H.; Clark, Luke

doi:10.1080/14459795.2022.2088822

Cited by 13 publications

(18 citation statements)

References 42 publications

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“…We think that the effect of prior outcomes on decision speed will generalize beyond the current population and procedure. Previous work has observed a similar post-loss speeding effect with various risky decision-making paradigms (e.g., Eben et al, 2022;Eben et al, 2020;Verbruggen et al, 2017), simulated gambling (Chen et al, 2020;Dixon et al, 2013;Ferrari et al, 2022;Stange et al, 2016) and real online gambling (Chen et al, 2022).…”

Section: Limitations Constraints Of Generality and Future Directionsmentioning

confidence: 56%

“…Furthermore, this effect has been observed in both participants from the general population (e.g., Ferrari et al, 2022;Verbruggen et al, 2017) and gamblers (Chen et al, 2022). We thus expect this finding to generalize to the general adult population, when real incentives are involved.…”

Section: Limitations Constraints Of Generality and Future Directionsmentioning

confidence: 58%

“…For instance, in both simulated and real gambling, a common form of risky decision-making involving monetary outcomes, one relatively consistent finding is that DECISION SPEED AND QUALITY 4 people tend to initiate a new round more quickly after a loss than after a win (e.g., Chen et al, 2022;Chen et al, 2020;Dixon et al, 2013;Dyson et al, 2018;Eben et al, 2020;Ferrari et al, 2022;Stange et al, 2016;Verbruggen et al, 2017). The increased response vigor after a loss may reflect increased motivational intensity, and has been termed 'impulsive action' (Verbruggen et al, 2017).…”

Section: Wins and Losses Influence Response Vigor And Risky Choicesmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Differential effects of prior outcomes and pauses on the speed and quality of risky choices

Chen

Eben

Verbruggen

2023

Preprint

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Failures to obtain rewards influence both the direction (choosing what to do) and intensity (response vigor) of subsequent motivated behavior. For instance, in risky decision-making, losses can induce faster responses ('intensity') and sometimes increase risk-taking ('direction'), which may lead to detrimental consequences. Pauses might reduce these motivational influences of prior outcomes. To examine this question, participants (from the general population on Prolific.co in 2022 and 2023) alternated between a guess game, in which they won or lost money, and a choice game, in which they chose between two risky options. The pause between a guess and a choice game was either short (0 or 300 milliseconds) or long (3000 milliseconds). In four experiments, prior outcomes consistently influenced decision speed, but not people’s choices. Contrarily, pauses increased decision quality (choosing the option with a higher expected value) without substantially reducing decision speed. Pauses may improve decision quality by increasing attention to relevant information, as its effect was absent when the overall task attention was increased (Experiment 3). These findings have implications for both responsible gambling and risky decision-making research. Future work can examine the underlying computational and cognitive processes, and the generalizability of these findings to other contexts and populations.

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Section: Limitations Constraints Of Generality and Future Directionsmentioning

confidence: 56%

Section: Limitations Constraints Of Generality and Future Directionsmentioning

confidence: 58%

Section: Wins and Losses Influence Response Vigor And Risky Choicesmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Differential effects of prior outcomes and pauses on the speed and quality of risky choices

Chen

Eben

Verbruggen

2023

Preprint

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“…This prediction has been largely corroborated in gambling situations. In real and simulated gambling, as well as in gambling analogue tasks, people tend to initiate a new round more quickly after a loss than after a win (e.g., Chen et al, 2022;Chen et al, 2020;Detez et al, 2019;Ferrari et al, 2022;Stange et al, 2017;Stange et al, 2016) and after a non-gamble outcome (Eben et al, 2020;Verbruggen et al, 2017).…”

Section: Appraising Outcomes In Gamblingmentioning

confidence: 99%

Am I winning or losing? Probing the appraisal of partial wins via response vigor

Chen

Eben

Reimer³

et al. 2023

Preprint

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Attempts to obtain rewards are not always successful. Despite investing much time, effort, or money, sometimes individuals may not obtain any reward. Other times they may obtain some reward, but the obtained reward may be smaller than their initial investment, such as partial wins in gambling. It remains unclear how such ambiguous outcomes are appraised. To address this question, we systematically varied the payoffs for different outcomes in a computerized scratch card task across three experiments. To test outcome appraisal, we used response vigor as a novel proxy. In the scratch card task, participants turned three cards one by one. Depending on the turned cards, they either received an amount that was higher than the wager (win), an amount lower than the wager (partial win), or nothing (loss). Overall, participants responded to partial wins more slowly than losses, but more quickly than wins. Partial wins were therefore appraised to be better than losses, but worse than wins. Importantly, further analyses showed that outcome appraisal was not based on the net win or loss amount. Instead, participants primarily used the configuration of turned cards as a cue for the relative rank of an outcome within a specific game. Outcome appraisals thus utilize simple heuristic rules, rely on salient information (such as outcome-related cues in gambling), and are specific to a local context. Together, these factors may contribute to the misperception of partial wins as real wins in gambling. Future work may examine how outcome appraisal may be modulated by the salience of certain information, and investigate the appraisal process in contexts beyond gambling.

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“…Slot machines have been extensively used and validated in the gambling literature 25,26 . To increase their ecological validity, some of these studies have used computerized slot machine paradigms that mimic casino settings, with 3D graphics, sounds and realistic spinning and deceleration phases [27][28][29] .…”

Section: Slot Machines As a Case Studymentioning

confidence: 99%

Dynamic expectations: Behavioral and electrophysiological evidence of sub-second updates in reward predictions

Marciano

Bellier

Mayer

et al. 2023

Preprint

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Expectations are often dynamic: any sports fan knows that expectations are rapidly updated as games unfold. Yet expectations have traditionally been studied as static. Here, using slot machines as a case study, we provide parallel behavioral and electrophysiological evidence of sub-second moment-to-moment changes in expectations. In Study 1, we show that the dynamics of the EEG signal before the slot machine stopped differed depending on the nature of the outcome, including not only whether the participant won or lost, but also how close they came to winning. In line with our predictions, Near Win Before outcomes (the slot machine stops one item before a match) were similar to Wins, but different than Near Win After (the machine stops one item after a match) and Full Miss (the machine stops two or three items from a match). In Study 2, we designed a novel behavioral paradigm to measure moment-to-moment changes in expectations via dynamic betting. We found that different outcomes also elicited unique expectation trajectories in the deceleration phase. Notably, these behavioral expectation trajectories paralleled Study 1's EEG activity in the last second prior to the machine's stop. In Studies 3 (EEG) and 4 (behavior) we replicated these findings in the loss domain where a match entails a loss. Again, we found a significant correlation between behavioral and EEG results. These four studies provide the first evidence that dynamic sub-second updates in expectations can be behaviorally and electrophysiologically measured. Our findings open up new avenues for studying the ongoing dynamics of reward expectations and their role in healthy and unhealthy cognition.

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Behavioral analysis of habit formation in modern slot machine gambling

Cited by 13 publications

References 42 publications

Differential effects of prior outcomes and pauses on the speed and quality of risky choices

Differential effects of prior outcomes and pauses on the speed and quality of risky choices

Am I winning or losing? Probing the appraisal of partial wins via response vigor

Dynamic expectations: Behavioral and electrophysiological evidence of sub-second updates in reward predictions

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