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Published on: September 19, 2012
Patterns of autonomic arousal in imaginal situations of winning and losing in problem gambling
1Department of Psychology, Clinical Psychology Unit F 12, University of Sydney, NSW, Australia 2006. louises@psych.usyd.edu.au
Aims:
To examine changes in skin conductance level (SCL), for problem gamblers in response to personally relevant imaginal tasks, representing winning or losing. SETTING, DESIGN, PARTICIPANTS AND MEASUREMENTS: SCL and subjective arousal were compared for problem poker machine gamblers (n = 13) and a control group (n = 20). Participants were asked to describe a situation in which they had (a) won and (b) lost during a period of gambling. Before and during the task, recordings of SCL were taken.
Findings:
There were significant differences between responses of problem and social gamblers. A significant interaction indicated that social gamblers became more aroused in reaction to winning than losing, whereas problem gamblers became equally aroused in response to both tasks.
Conclusions:
The results suggest that it may be responses to losing, rather than winning that are paramount to the development and maintenance of problem gambling.
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