A behavioral approach to understanding and treating pathological gambling

This report provides a behavioral account of gambling and its treatment. It describes the similarities between gambling and other behaviors maintained by intermittent schedules of reinforcement, the relationship between response cost and gambling behaviors, and how magnitudes of reinforcers affect gambling behaviors. In addition, the relationship between immediacy of reinforcement and behavior is described. Using these behavioral phenomena, behavioral and cognitive-behavioral treatments of pathological gambling are described. Finally, we present the rationale and framework for our cognitive-behavioral treatment, and we provide a behavioral interpretation of 12-step groups.