Gambling behaviors and attitudes in adolescent high-school students: Relationships with problem-gambling severity and smoking status.

Background And Aims: Smoking is associated with more severe/extensive gambling in adults. The purpose of this study was to examine relationships between smoking and gambling in adolescents.

Methods: Analyses utilized survey data from 1591 Connecticut high-school students.

Cigarette smoking, problem-gambling severity, and health behaviors in high-school students.

Introduction: Smoking and gambling are two significant public health concerns. Little is known about the association of smoking and gambling in adolescents. The current study of high-school adolescents examined: (1) smoking behavior by problem-gambling severity and (2) health-related variables by problem-gambling severity and smoking status.

Neurobiological considerations in understanding behavioral treatments for pathological gambling.

Pathological gambling (PG), a disorder currently categorized as an impulse-control disorder but being considered as a nonsubstance addiction in Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (5th ed.) discussions, represents a significant public health concern. Over the past decade, considerable advances have been made with respect to understanding the biological underpinnings of PG.

Past-year recreational gambling in a nationally representative sample: correlates of casino, non-casino, and both casino/non-casino gambling.

Data from the Gambling Impact and Behavior Study (GIBS), a national survey of 2417 U.S. adults, were examined by multivariate analysis to investigate characteristics of past-year recreational gamblers who participated in casino-only, non-casino-only, and both casino and non-casino gambling.

Sex differences in salivary cortisol in response to acute stressors among healthy participants, in recreational or pathological gamblers, and in those with posttraumatic stress disorder.

Sex differences in incidence and severity of some stress-related, neuropsychiatric disorders are often reported to favor men, suggesting that women may be more vulnerable to aberrant hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis responses to stress. In this review, we discuss several investigations that we, and others, have conducted assessing salivary cortisol as a measure of HPA function. We have examined basal cortisol among healthy men and women and also following acute exposure to stressors.

The role of money in the excitement of gambling.

Many gamblers claim that gambling is intrinsically exciting, with money playing only a secondary role. To examine the effects of the expectancy of winning money, the authors randomly assigned 243 male college student gamblers to 1 of 6 experimental or 1 of 3 control conditions. Control participants either simply watched a videotaped horse race or they picked a horse, but without wagering; that horse later turned out to be either the winner of the race or the runner-up.

Gambling screens: does shortening the time frame affect their psychometric properties?

Gambling screening tools such as the South Oaks Gambling Screen (SOGS) and a DSM-IV Screen for Gambling Problems (NODS) developed by the National Opinion Research Council have psychometrically validated lifetime and past-year versions. As research questions often dictate shorter time intervals, researchers have adapted the time frames of these instruments to their specific purposes without examining whether changing the time frame affects the psychometric properties. In this study, 3-month versions of SOGS and NODS were administered to a sample of 80 pathological gamblers (59 men, 21 women, mean age 44) seeking treatment at a state-funded facility.

Heart rate arousal and excitement in gambling: winners versus losers.

People sometimes claim they gamble for excitement rather than money. The authors examined in a laboratory analog whether excitement is generated by the expectancy of winning money. Eighty male undergraduate students watched a videotaped horse race with an exciting neck-to-neck finish.