• HOME
  • NEWS
  • EXPLORE
    • CAREER
      • Companies
      • Jobs
    • EVENTS
    • iGEM
      • News
      • Team
    • PHOTOS
    • VIDEO
    • WIKI
  • BLOG
  • COMMUNITY
    • FACEBOOK
    • INSTAGRAM
    • TWITTER
Thursday, July 31, 2025
BIOENGINEER.ORG
No Result
View All Result
  • Login
  • HOME
  • NEWS
  • EXPLORE
    • CAREER
      • Companies
      • Jobs
        • Lecturer
        • PhD Studentship
        • Postdoc
        • Research Assistant
    • EVENTS
    • iGEM
      • News
      • Team
    • PHOTOS
    • VIDEO
    • WIKI
  • BLOG
  • COMMUNITY
    • FACEBOOK
    • INSTAGRAM
    • TWITTER
  • HOME
  • NEWS
  • EXPLORE
    • CAREER
      • Companies
      • Jobs
        • Lecturer
        • PhD Studentship
        • Postdoc
        • Research Assistant
    • EVENTS
    • iGEM
      • News
      • Team
    • PHOTOS
    • VIDEO
    • WIKI
  • BLOG
  • COMMUNITY
    • FACEBOOK
    • INSTAGRAM
    • TWITTER
No Result
View All Result
Bioengineer.org
No Result
View All Result
Home NEWS Science News Biology

WVU psychologist ‘reverse engineers’ slot machines to better understand compulsive gambling

Bioengineer by Bioengineer
April 8, 2024
in Biology
Reading Time: 3 mins read
0
Share on FacebookShare on TwitterShare on LinkedinShare on RedditShare on Telegram

A West Virginia University researcher is studying slot machines to determine what makes them a potentially addictive form of gambling.

GamblingAddiction

Credit: WVU Photo/Brian Persinger

A West Virginia University researcher is studying slot machines to determine what makes them a potentially addictive form of gambling.

Mariya Cherkasova, assistant professor in the Department of Psychology at the WVU Eberly College of Arts and Sciences, will spend the next two years “reverse engineering” certain structural characteristics of slot machines to find out what makes them an immersive product. Her research is supported by the International Center for Responsible Gaming.

In hopes of understanding the addictive nature of the games, Cherkasova will examine the interactions between subjects’ individual characteristics and the slot machines’ structural characteristics. Subjects will play several versions of a highly realistic slot machine simulator that runs in a browser.

“Some versions of the game will include the typical bells and whistles that accompany wins, while others will not,” she said. “This exemplifies the reverse engineering of the sensory feedback — one version has bells and whistles while the other lacks them.”

She will also manipulate how often and how much the players win, known as a reinforcement schedule. Game versions will be engineered to have specific reinforcement ratios and intervals.

In an additional experiment in her laboratory, Cherkasova will track subjects’ eyes during simulator play.

“That part is pretty innovative,” she said. “Because when you’re measuring immersion, it’s mostly been based on self-report, and there’s a bit of a paradox in there — how can you measure immersion without disrupting those states? You either have to measure it retrospectively, or you have to disrupt the state to measure it. Some of our past work suggests that you can study immersion using eye tracking. We hope to validate those indices as tacit measures of immersion that do not involve explicit self-report or interrupting the immersive state.”

A graduate research assistant will run the laboratory study and collect data in the second year of the two-year study.

Studies have shown slot machines are associated with harms more than other gambling modalities like the lottery.

“From a public health perspective, there’s a continuum of gambling,” Cherkasova said. “Some products are associated with very few harms. Few people develop problematic gambling patterns buying lottery tickets. Slot machines are still ‘king’ in terms of how many people play them. And they still account for the lion’s portion of gambling revenue and are on the other end of the harm continuum.”

Some slot machine gamblers become highly immersed and absorbed in the game, a state sometimes referred to as the “zone.” Similar states may be experienced while playing video games or binge watching a show. However, those states may be especially harmful during slot machine play because they can lead to a person losing significant sums of money.

“The person loses track of time,” she said. “They forget everything around them and just keep playing and playing the slot machine. This is something that’s associated with compulsive gameplay and very significant losses.”

In past work, Cherkasova and other researchers found higher levels of depression and lower levels of dispositional mindfulness are both strongly correlated with immersion. However, just as a biological predisposition may lead to gambling problems, gambling products and environments also bring out these same tendencies.

“For that reason, it’s as important to study the characteristics of gambling products as it is to study individual characteristics of the players that may be liabilities,” she said.

While the gambling industry doesn’t share information about the characteristics of slot machines, a kind of natural selection process guides which models stay on the floor or online — those that make the most money tend to remain in use.

In future research, Cherkasova would like to study what happens in a player’s brain when they enter a flow state, like “the zone,” when playing a slot machine. A small number of studies have focused on players’ flow states during video gameplay, but none have looked at gambling or slot machine use.

“Frankly, we really don’t know what goes on in the brain,” Cherkasova said.

She said she believes her work will help researchers understand why slot machines are one of the most harmful gambling modalities and how slot machine design interacts with players’ individual vulnerabilities to cause harm.

“Diagnosable gambling disorders are rare,” she said. “But just like drinking alcohol, there’s really no completely safe level of gambling.”



Share12Tweet8Share2ShareShareShare2

Related Posts

Western Biologists Uncover Long-Standing Mystery Behind Cricket Song Mechanism

Western Biologists Uncover Long-Standing Mystery Behind Cricket Song Mechanism

July 31, 2025
How ‘Scrumping’ Apes Might Have Sparked Our Craving for Alcohol

How ‘Scrumping’ Apes Might Have Sparked Our Craving for Alcohol

July 31, 2025

Foraging for Fruit Crucial to Chimpanzee Survival and a Driving Factor in Human Evolution

July 31, 2025

Gut Bacteria Polypeptides Boost Rodent Metabolism

July 31, 2025

POPULAR NEWS

  • Blind to the Burn

    Overlooked Dangers: Debunking Common Myths About Skin Cancer Risk in the U.S.

    60 shares
    Share 24 Tweet 15
  • Dr. Miriam Merad Honored with French Knighthood for Groundbreaking Contributions to Science and Medicine

    46 shares
    Share 18 Tweet 12
  • Study Reveals Beta-HPV Directly Causes Skin Cancer in Immunocompromised Individuals

    37 shares
    Share 15 Tweet 9
  • Engineered Cellular Communication Enhances CAR-T Therapy Effectiveness Against Glioblastoma

    35 shares
    Share 14 Tweet 9

About

We bring you the latest biotechnology news from best research centers and universities around the world. Check our website.

Follow us

Recent News

α-Synuclein Fibril Structure Drives Parkinson’s Seeding

Not All Low-Grade Prostate Cancers Pose Low Risk, Study Finds

Examining the Link Between GLP-1 Receptor Agonists and Nonarteritic Anterior Ischemic Optic Neuropathy Risk in Older Adults with Diabetes

  • Contact Us

Bioengineer.org © Copyright 2023 All Rights Reserved.

Welcome Back!

Login to your account below

Forgotten Password?

Retrieve your password

Please enter your username or email address to reset your password.

Log In
No Result
View All Result
  • Homepages
    • Home Page 1
    • Home Page 2
  • News
  • National
  • Business
  • Health
  • Lifestyle
  • Science

Bioengineer.org © Copyright 2023 All Rights Reserved.