People who gamble sometimes experience what has been called the slot machine zone. This is a unique state of mind in which the person is very absorbed in their gambling. They may lose track of time, become unaware of what is happening around them, and in extreme cases lose a sense of their own identity. The dissociation account and the flow account have each proposed their own views of the slot machine zone. This review summarized the existing literature on the slot machine zone. The authors then proposed their own account of the slot machine zone that combines the dissociation and flow accounts. Their model is called the gambling immersion model and suggests that people who gamble may become absorbed to varying degrees in their gambling.
