Testing for a moderating effect of laboratory-induced acute stress on gambling-related attentional biases
Date
2023-09-21
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Abstract
Gambling disorder is often accompanied by elements of disordered attentional processes which result in a bias for gambling-related stimuli. These attentional biases (AB) tend to positively correlate with the degree of disorder that an individual may experience and are therefore present (to a lesser extent) in individuals whose gambling involvement is not considered problematic. Stress is well-known to lower the threshold for the initiation of addictive behaviours and is associated with AB; however, the contextual and temporal relationship between a stressor and gambling-related ABs have not been well investigated. This study examined the moderating effects of acute stress induced in the laboratory with the anticipatory speech task (AST) on the relationship between problem gambling severity and AB for gambling-related imagery. ABs were measured as the fixation time toward gambling-related images vs. neutral images using eye-gaze tacking technology. Stress was assessed with subjective self-reports, using a 10-point visual analog scale, and physiological measures (heart rate, skin conductance, heart rate variability; HRV). Results from linear regression analyses indicated that subjective measures of stress significantly moderated the relationship between problem gambling severity and AB, whereas HRV was a marginally significant moderator. The overall AB observed was avoidance of gambling-related images, and this was most pronounced in at-risk gamblers who were least affected by the AST. In at-risk gamblers who experienced increases in stress from the AST, the avoidance bias was smaller (i.e., they attended to gambling-related images more than at-risk gamblers who did not experience an increase in subjective stress). Overall, these findings suggest that acute stress can quickly lead to an increase in preferential attention for gambling-related images in those who report problematic gambling habits.
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Keywords
gambling, attentional biases, eye-tracking, laboratory stress-induction
Citation
Cunningham, D. R. (2023). Testing for a moderating effect of laboratory-induced acute stress on gambling-related attentional biases (Master's thesis, University of Calgary, Calgary, Canada). Retrieved from https://prism.ucalgary.ca.