People with problem gambling show poor learning when making decisions on outcomes that are uncertain. This study examined if specific difficulties in learning might be linked to the experience of specific harms from gambling. The researchers asked 140 people who gambled casually to complete a decision-making task (the Iowa Gambling Task) and a questionnaire on harms from gambling (the GamTest).
In general, people who tended to switch their choices during the task were more likely to report harms from gambling. This might be because they were less able to make use of what they had previously learned when making their choices. Also, being more influenced by how often one got rewarded was linked to spending too much time gambling and social problems due to gambling. Learning more quickly from rewards than from losses was linked to money problems and negative emotional consequences. These results could be used to inform learning and decision-making in problem gambling.
