Sharpe L, Tarrier N, Schotte D, Spence S H
Hounslow & Spelthorne NHS Trust, Clinical Psychology Department, West Middlesex Hospital Site, Isleworth, UK.
Addiction. 1995 Nov;90(11):1529-40. doi: 10.1046/j.1360-0443.1995.9011152911.x.
The present study investigated the role of arousal in problem gambling. Three groups of subjects were recruited into the study corresponding to problem gamblers, high and low frequency social gamblers. For the two gambling groups, the preferred form of gambling was poker machine playing. Five different conditions were employed in order to determine under which conditions gambling related cues were related to increased autonomic arousal, as measured by skin conductance level (SCL), heart rate (HR) and frontalis electromyography (EMG). The five conditions were a neutral task, a videotaped poker machine gambling scenario presented with and without distraction, a personally relevant "win" situation and a videotaped horse race. Comparisons between responses for the videotaped poker machine gambling stimuli versus a horse-racing video task demonstrated differences only for the problem gambling group and only for SCL. No differences between these tasks emerged on the HR and EMG indices and no differences were evident for either of the social gambling groups. No changes were observed in any group when subject's cognitions were prevented by asking patients to count the number of wins made during the video play period while watching the same poker machine video. However, when personally relevant situations were presented and compared to a neutral task, differences were observed in all three groups. However, the nature of these differences varied between the groups and the different indices of arousal. For problem gamblers, increases were evident in all three measures. Increases were also observed for the control groups in comparison to the neutral task, but only in HR and SCL and not for EMG. For HR, the increases were equivalent across all three gambling groups. However, for SCL the problem gambling group became significantly more aroused than the control groups, but no differences were observed between the high and low frequency gamblers. Only the problem gambling groups evidenced significant increases in the personally relevant task compared to the neutral task for EMG. Theoretical and clinical implications of these results for the development, maintenance and treatment of problematic levels of gambling are discussed.
本研究调查了唤醒在问题赌博中的作用。三组受试者被招募进该研究，分别对应问题赌徒、高频和低频社交赌徒。对于两个赌博组，他们偏好的赌博形式是玩老虎机。采用了五种不同的条件，以确定在哪些条件下，与赌博相关的线索会导致自主唤醒增加，自主唤醒通过皮肤电导水平（SCL）、心率（HR）和额肌肌电图（EMG）来测量。这五种条件分别是一个中性任务、一个播放时有和没有干扰的老虎机赌博场景录像、一个与个人相关的“赢”的情境以及一场赛马录像。对老虎机赌博刺激录像与赛马视频任务的反应进行比较，结果表明仅问题赌博组存在差异，且仅在SCL方面。在HR和EMG指标上，这些任务之间没有差异，两个社交赌博组也没有明显差异。当通过要求患者在观看相同老虎机视频时数出视频播放期间赢的次数来阻止受试者的认知时，所有组均未观察到变化。然而，当呈现与个人相关的情境并与中性任务进行比较时，所有三组均观察到差异。然而，这些差异的性质在不同组以及不同的唤醒指标之间有所不同。对于问题赌徒，所有三项测量指标均有明显增加。与中性任务相比，对照组在HR和SCL方面也有增加，但EMG没有。对于HR，所有三个赌博组的增加幅度相当。然而，对于SCL，问题赌博组的唤醒明显高于对照组，但高频和低频赌徒之间没有差异。只有问题赌博组在与个人相关的任务中，与中性任务相比，EMG有显著增加。讨论了这些结果对赌博问题水平的发展、维持和治疗的理论及临床意义。
