Investigating Decision-Making under Risk in Pathological Gambling Using a Virtual Slot Machine: A Pilot Eye-Tracking Study.

IF 2.3 3区医学 Q2 PSYCHIATRY

European Addiction Research Pub Date : 2025-08-26 DOI:10.1159/000547742

Gloria Baumann, Ronald Fischer, Iris Reinhard, Sabine Hoffmann, Falk Kiefer, Tagrid Leménager, Patrick Bach

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引用次数: 0

Abstract

Introduction: Pathological gambling (PG) is characterized by altered decision-making. Even though studies have investigated decision-making in patients with PG, the effects of win-contingent stimuli thereon are not well understood yet.

Methods: Thus, we conducted a study in patients with PG (n = 10) and healthy individuals (n = 14), who performed two versions of a slot machine gambling task with and without win-contingent cues, while decision-making and gaze fixations were assessed using high-resolution eye-tracking.

Results: Patients with PG showed higher rates of high-risk decisions, lower rates of rational choices and showed less visual attention to probability information, but increased visual attention toward gambling cues, compared to healthy individuals. In the presence of win-contingent gambling cues, participants needed significantly more time to decide between high-risk versus low-risk gambles and spent significantly less time watching the probability information.

Conclusion: Findings highlight the relevance of gambling-associated cues in PG. Targeting altered cue-reactivity could contribute to normalizing risky decision-making in patients with PG.

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利用虚拟老虎机调查病态赌博风险下的决策——一项实验性的眼球追踪研究。

病理性赌博（PG）的特点是决策改变。尽管研究已经调查了PG患者的决策，但win-contingent刺激对其的影响尚未得到很好的理解。因此，我们在PG患者（n = 10）和健康个体（n = 14）中进行了一项研究，他们在有和没有获胜提示的情况下执行两种版本的老虎机赌博任务，同时使用高分辨率眼动追踪评估决策和凝视。与健康个体相比，PG患者表现出更高的高风险决策率，更低的理性选择率，对概率信息的视觉注意较少，但对赌博线索的视觉注意增加。在可能获胜的赌博提示存在的情况下，参与者需要更多的时间来决定高风险还是低风险的赌博，并且花费更少的时间来观察概率信息。研究结果强调了病态赌博中赌博相关线索的相关性。靶向改变的线索反应性可能有助于使PG患者的风险决策正常化。

本文章由计算机程序翻译，如有差异，请以英文原文为准。

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来源期刊

European Addiction Research SUBSTANCE ABUSE-PSYCHIATRY

CiteScore

6.80

自引率

5.10%

发文量

审稿时长

>12 weeks

期刊介绍： ''European Addiction Research'' is a unique international scientific journal for the rapid publication of innovative research covering all aspects of addiction and related disorders. Representing an interdisciplinary forum for the exchange of recent data and expert opinion, it reflects the importance of a comprehensive approach to resolve the problems of substance abuse and addiction in Europe. Coverage ranges from clinical and research advances in the fields of psychiatry, biology, pharmacology and epidemiology to social, and legal implications of policy decisions. The goal is to facilitate open discussion among those interested in the scientific and clinical aspects of prevention, diagnosis and therapy as well as dealing with legal issues. An excellent range of original papers makes ‘European Addiction Research’ the forum of choice for all.