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01-06-2018 | Original Paper

Reduced Risk-Taking After Prior Losses in Pathological Gamblers Under Treatment and Healthy Control Group but not in Problem Gamblers

Authors: Nicolao Bonini, Alessandro Grecucci, Manuel Nicolè, Lucia Savadori

Published in: Journal of Gambling Studies | Issue 2/2018

Abstract

A group of pathological gamblers and a group of problem gamblers (i.e., gamblers at risk of becoming pathological) were compared to healthy controls on their risk-taking propensity after prior losses. Each participant played both the Balloon Analogue Risk Taking task (BART) and a modified version of the same task, where individuals face five repeated predetermined early losses at the onset of the game. No significant difference in risk-taking was found between groups on the standard BART task, while significant differences emerged when comparing behaviors in the two tasks: both pathological gamblers and controls reduced their risk-taking tendency after prior losses in the modified BART compared to the standard BART, whereas problem gamblers showed no reduction in risk-taking after prior losses. We interpret these results as a sign of a reduced sensitivity to negative feedback in problem gamblers which might contribute to explain their loss-chasing tendency.

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Title: Reduced Risk-Taking After Prior Losses in Pathological Gamblers Under Treatment and Healthy Control Group but not in Problem Gamblers
Authors: Nicolao Bonini
Alessandro Grecucci
Manuel Nicolè
Lucia Savadori
Publication date: 01-06-2018
Publisher: Springer US
Published in: Journal of Gambling Studies / Issue 2/2018
Electronic ISSN: 1573-3602
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10899-017-9709-z

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Reduced Risk-Taking After Prior Losses in Pathological Gamblers Under Treatment and Healthy Control Group but not in Problem Gamblers

Abstract

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