Future-oriented mental time travel in individuals with disordered gambling
Xavier Noël1, Mélanie Saeremans2, Charles Kornreich3
1Laboratoire de Psychologie Médicale et d'Addictologie, Université Libre de Bruxelles (ULB), Belgium.
Consciousness and Cognition
|February 20, 2017
Summary
Individuals with disordered gambling struggle to imagine future events, showing reduced future-oriented mental time travel and less detailed future thoughts. This impairment is linked to problem gambling severity and verbal fluency.
Area of Science:
- Cognitive Psychology
- Neuroscience of Addiction
Background:
- Disordered gambling is a significant public health issue.
- Impaired future thinking may contribute to addictive behaviors.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate future-oriented mental time travel in individuals with disordered gambling.
- To compare the phenomenological aspects of future thoughts between problem gamblers and controls.
Main Methods:
- 35 problem gamblers and 35 controls imagined positive and negative future events at various temporal distances.
- Phenomenological aspects of future thoughts, including sensory details and autonoetic consciousness, were assessed.
Main Results:
- Problem gamblers generated fewer future events across all timeframes compared to controls.
- This deficit correlated with lower verbal fluency scores.
- Gamblers' imagined events had fewer sensory/contextual details and less autonoetic consciousness.
Conclusions:
- Problem gambling is associated with impaired future-oriented mental time travel.
- Diminished autonoetic consciousness is a key feature of future thinking deficits in disordered gambling.
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