Emergent response allocation and outcome ratings in slot machine gambling.

The present study describes a contemporary behavior-analytic model of emergent simulated slot machine gambling. Three laboratory experiments investigated the conditions under which stimuli correlated with different slot machine payout probabilities come to have new, emergent functions without those functions being trained directly. After a successful test for verbal relations (A1-B1-C1 and A2-B2-C2), gamblers and nongamblers were exposed to a task in which high- and low-payout probability functions were established for two slot machines labeled with members of the derived relations (B1 and B2).