Institute and Department of Psychiatry, University of São Paulo, Butantã, São Paulo, 03178-200, Brazil.
Department of Psychology, University of Calgary, 2500 University Drive NW, Calgary, AB, T2N 1N4, Canada.
J Gambl Stud. 2020 Sep;36(3):829-849. doi: 10.1007/s10899-020-09947-0.
Gambling Disorder (GD) is characterized by persistent betting even in face of accruing debts and psychosocial hardship. Gambling Disorder behavior has been linked to conditioning, cognitive distortions and superstitious behavior. Previous studies have demonstrated that during response-outcome analytical tests (ROAT), non-gambling individuals are precluded from response extinction when failure feedback is suppressed, and develop superstitious behaviors and illusion of control instead. Gambling can be regarded as a ROAT paradigm in which disordered gamblers (DGs) fail to compute failure feedback; hence they do not perceive the independence between response and outcome. In order to investigate early phenomena on response and outcome processing in DGs, we developed two short ROAT versions, one with a controllable outcome and one with an uncontrollable outcome, both with explicit failure feedback. Twenty DGs and twenty healthy controls were assessed using this novel paradigm. Compared to controls, DGs reported higher distress during the controllable ROAT, less self-confidence in the uncontrollable ROAT, and more random responses and less use of analytical strategies in both tests, evidencing potential deficits in cognitive control. In contrast to previous findings, DGs did not demonstrate more superstitious beliefs, or illusion of control, and were generally more skeptical than controls regarding the controllability of both ROAT versions. Taken together, our findings provide some support for deficits in cognitive control in GD that precede illusion of control and superstitious behaviors.
赌博障碍（GD）的特征是持续赌博，即使面临债务累积和心理社会困难。赌博障碍行为与条件作用、认知扭曲和迷信行为有关。先前的研究表明，在反应-结果分析测试（ROAT）中，当失败反馈被抑制时，非赌博个体被阻止反应消退，并且会发展出迷信行为和控制错觉。赌博可以被视为 ROAT 范式，其中障碍性赌徒（DGs）无法计算失败反馈；因此，他们没有感知到反应和结果之间的独立性。为了研究 DG 对反应和结果处理的早期现象，我们开发了两个简短的 ROAT 版本，一个是可控结果，一个是不可控结果，两者都有明确的失败反馈。我们使用这个新的范式评估了 20 名 DG 和 20 名健康对照者。与对照组相比，DG 在可控 ROAT 中报告了更高的痛苦，在不可控 ROAT 中报告了更低的自信，在两个测试中表现出更多的随机反应和更少的分析策略，表明认知控制存在潜在缺陷。与之前的发现相反，DG 没有表现出更多的迷信信念或控制错觉，并且相对于对照组，他们对两个 ROAT 版本的可控性通常更持怀疑态度。总的来说，我们的研究结果为 GD 中的认知控制缺陷提供了一些支持，这些缺陷先于控制错觉和迷信行为。
