Centre for Gambling Research at UBC, Department of Psychology, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, B.C., Canada; Djavad Mowafaghian Centre for Brain Health, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, B.C., Canada.
Molecular Brain Sciences Research Department, Centre for Addiction and Mental Health, Toronto, ON, Canada; Department of Pharmacology and Toxicology, University of Toronto, Toronto, ON, Canada.
Addict Behav. 2023 May;140:107626. doi: 10.1016/j.addbeh.2023.107626. Epub 2023 Jan 21.
Influential learning-based accounts of substance addictions posit the attribution of incentive salience to drug-associated cues, and its escalation by the direct dopaminergic effects of drugs. In translating this account to disordered gambling, we have noted how the intermittent nature of monetary rewards in gambling (i.e. the variable ratio) may allow for analogous learning processes, via effects on dopaminergic signalling. The aim of the present article is to consider how multiple sources of reward variability operate within modern gambling products, and how similar sources of variability, as well as some novel sources of variability, also apply to other digital products implicated in behavioural addictions, including gaming, shopping, social media and online pornography. Online access to these activities facilitates not only unparalleled accessibility but also introduces novel forms of reward variability, as seen in the effects of infinite scrolls and personalized recommendations. We use the term uncertainty to refer to the subjective experience of reward variability. We further highlight two psychological factors that appear to moderate the effects of uncertainty: 1) the timecourse of uncertainty, especially with regard to its resolution, 2) the frequency of exposure, allowing temporal compression. Collectively, the evidence illustrates how qualitative and quantitative variability of reward can confer addictive potential to non-drug reinforcers by exploiting the psychological and neural processes that rely on predictability to guide reward seeking behaviour.
有影响力的基于学习的物质成瘾理论认为，药物相关线索会被赋予激励显著性，并且药物的直接多巴胺能效应会使其加剧。在将这一理论应用于紊乱性赌博时，我们注意到赌博中金钱奖励的间歇性（即变量比）如何通过对多巴胺能信号的影响，允许类似的学习过程。本文的目的是考虑现代赌博产品中的多种奖励可变性来源是如何运作的，以及类似的可变性来源和一些新的可变性来源如何也适用于其他与行为成瘾有关的数字产品，包括游戏、购物、社交媒体和在线色情。这些活动的在线访问不仅提供了无与伦比的可访问性，还引入了新的奖励可变性形式，例如无限滚动和个性化推荐的影响。我们使用“不确定性”一词来指代奖励可变性的主观体验。我们进一步强调了两个似乎调节不确定性影响的心理因素：1）不确定性的时间进程，特别是解决不确定性的时间进程，2）暴露的频率，允许时间压缩。总的来说，证据说明了奖励的定性和定量可变性如何通过利用依赖于可预测性来指导奖励寻求行为的心理和神经过程，使非药物强化物具有成瘾潜力。
