Age-related differences in physiological responding to simulated electronic gambling
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1
Western Sydney University, School of Social Sciences and Psychology, Australia
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2
University of Hagen, School of Psychology, Germany
Older adults aged 65 years or more are increasingly spending their time and money playing electronic gambling machines (EGMs). Consistent with the age-related positivity effect, the current study predicted that older adults would respond more positively than young adults to wins and fake wins (i.e., losses disguised as wins) during simulated EGM play. Autonomic measures of positivity are particularly important as they could help to explain older adults’ attraction to gambling. In the current study, young (n = 19; age range 18-35 years) and older adults (n = 26; age range 66-84 years) were given 1000 credits (i.e., $10) to bet with (10 credits per bet). They completed two blocks of 80 bets each that consisted of 15% wins (60 credits), 15% fake wins (5 credits), and 70% losses. A 5.5 s epoch (1.5 s pre- to 4 s post-outcome) of skin conductance response (SCR) and heart rate (HR) was analyzed. We found that HR increases did not differentiate outcome type, and were greater for young than older adults. Averaged across age group, SCR was greater for wins than losses, but did not differentiate losses and fake wins. This may be because the additional positive feedback that accompanies a fake win in commercial EGMs was removed from the current simulated version. The age groups also did not differ in self-reported enjoyment or excitement. Although the age-related positivity effect has previously been demonstrated in behavioral and neural data, there was no evidence for this effect in the current study, and the results do not support the notion that age-related positivity contributes to the maintenance of gambling. Rather, during EGM play, older adults experienced hypoarousal.
Acknowledgements
This research was supported under Australian Research Council’s Discovery Projects funding scheme (project number DP130101420).
Keywords:
age differences,
electronic gambling machines,
Heart Rate,
Skin conductance response,
Arousal,
fake wins
Conference:
ASP2015 - 25th Annual Conference of the Australasian Society for Psychophysiology, Sydney, Australia, 2 Dec - 4 Dec, 2015.
Presentation Type:
Poster Presentation
Topic:
Psychophysiology
Citation:
Leon
T,
Bailey
PE,
Maiuolo
M,
Benedek
G and
Gonsalvez
C
(2015). Age-related differences in physiological responding to simulated electronic gambling.
Conference Abstract:
ASP2015 - 25th Annual Conference of the Australasian Society for Psychophysiology.
doi: 10.3389/conf.fnhum.2015.219.00005
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Received:
10 Nov 2015;
Published Online:
30 Nov 2015.
*
Correspondence:
Dr. Phoebe E Bailey, Western Sydney University, School of Social Sciences and Psychology, Sydney, Australia, p.bailey@uws.edu.au