Eye on the Prize: High-Risk Gamblers Show Sustained Selective Attention to Gambling Cues

Abstract

Disordered gambling is characterized by persistent and problematic gambling, leading to impairment or distress, which may be exacerbated by vigilance to gambling cues in the environment. Yet, questions regarding the specific attentional biases present in gamblers remain unresolved. In the current study, we used a rapid serial visual presentation paradigm to examine attentional orienting and maintenance/ disengagement for gambling stimuli, relative to emotional and neutral stimuli, in high-and low-risk gamblers (N = 57). High-risk gamblers showed attentional biases for gambling stimuli, relative to other distractors, and these biases were observed at the level of attentional maintenance/disengagement. Low-risk gamblers showed some evidence of non-specific attentional biases (to negative and gambling pictures). Low-risk, but not high-risk, gamblers demonstrated sustained biases for negative items and facilitated disengagement from positive items. Findings highlight differences in attentional processes between high-and low-risk gamblers and point to sustained biases as worthy targets for clinical interventions. Future work should assess the malleability of gambling biases in high-risk gamblers and determine whether altering attention to gambling items influences gambling behaviour. Résumé Le jeu compulsif est caractérisé par des comportements liés au jeu qui sont problé-matiques et persistants, et qui entraînent une détresse ou une incapacité à fonctionner pouvant être exacerbées par l'attention accordée aux signaux associés au jeu dans

Cued for risk: Evidence for an incentive sensitization framework to explain the interplay between stress and anxiety, substance abuse, and reward uncertainty in disordered gambling behavior

“…Gambling environments are robustly full of cues, such as flashing lights and sounds (Griffiths, 1993;Noseworthy & Finlay, 2009;Parke & Griffiths, 2006), and gamblers have been shown to display greater attentional bias and fixate their gaze for longer on gambling-related cues (Hudson, Olatunji, Gough, Yi, & Stewart, 2016;McGrath, Meitner, & Sears, 2018). The cues in the gambling environment in and of themselves have demonstrated the ability to elicit craving and induce urges to gamble (Kushner et al, 2008;Park et al, 2015;Potenza et al, 2003;Wulfert, Maxson, & Jardin, 2009).…”

Impulsivity, Emotion Regulation, Cognitive Distortions and Attentional Bias in a Spanish Sample of Gambling Disorder Patients: Comparison between Online and Land-Based Gambling

“…In addition to gambling-related cognitions, a large body of research has demonstrated the importance of attentional bias in addictive behaviors, including GD [23,[50][51][52][53]. That is, a gambling-related stimulus can be processed automatically once it is detected, making it difficult to divert one's attention from it.…”

A Case–Control Study on Behavioral Addictions and Neurocognition: Description of the BANCO and BANCO2 Protocols

“…The use of emotional and addiction-related stimuli allows us to differentiate a bias towards addiction-related stimuli or to general emotional stimuli. 164 Regarding the tasks using addiction-related pictures, we take into account the patient's preference using a personalized research perspective. Each addiction has a list of several modalities of pictures (see details in Table 4), and the participant has to choose two modalities (except for those with FA, who choose only one modality) that reflect his/her preferences.…”