Effects of Contextual Control in Simulated Slot-Machine Gambling

Colors are structural characteristic of slot-machines, and are assumed as a possible cause for maintenance of problem gambling. Previous experiments have shown that conditional discrimination training can change the participants’ preference on two concurrently available simulated slot-machines. However, some of the replications have shown varied results and several researchers have suggested to use talk-aloud procedures. The purpose of the present experiment was: (a) to replicate the effect from previous studies of contextual control on slot-machine gambling, and (b) to include the talk-aloud procedure by examining the correspondence between participants verbal responses and their responses on the slot-machines. Conditional discrimination training established the contextual cues “more than” and “less than” for the colors (yellow and blue). The results shown that nine of 10 participants altered response from pretest to posttest 1, and four of nine participants did so from posttest 1 to posttest 2. Interesting, the results from talk-aloud procedure shown that seven participants had correspondence with verbal responses and the responses on the slot-machines.