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Acute stress response dysfunction in problem gambling (PG) and relationships with features of addiction

2025· article· en· W4412980620 on OpenAlexafffund
Nikki Pangborn, Anna M. Froude, Luke Barkovich, Sarah L. Brassard, Iris M. Balodis

Bibliographic record

VenuePsychoneuroendocrinology · 2025
Typearticle
Languageen
FieldPsychology
TopicGambling Behavior and Treatments
Canadian institutionsSt. Joseph’s Healthcare Hamilton
FundersPeter Boris Centre for Addictions ResearchInternational Center for Responsible GamingMcMaster University
KeywordsAddictionPsychologyStress (linguistics)Clinical psychologyPsychiatryPhilosophy

Abstract

fetched live from OpenAlex

Individuals with problem gambling (PG) report high stress which contributes to the onset and maintenance of gambling problems. However, few studies examine acute physiological and subjective stress responses and draw comparisons to features of addiction, such as heightened gambling urges and impulsivity. The purpose of this study is to examine the acute stress response through multiple physiological biomarkers, self-reported mood, and gambling urges in those with PG (n = 21) relative to healthy controls (HCs; n = 21). Furthermore, we test the relationship between impulsivity and acute stress processing within groups. Salivary cortisol (sC) and salivary alpha-amylase (sAA) were collected, and participants completed self-report assessments of mood disturbances and gambling urges at baseline and three times following acute psychosocial stress exposure. Results revealed consistently elevated mood disturbances, while reactive sC concentrations appeared blunted in PG. Conversely, sAA responded to stress similarly between groups. Interactions between markers were identified within PG and HC groups during stress reactivity, but were enhanced in PG participants during stress recovery. While gambling urges did not increase in response to acute stress in PG, they were associated with trait impulsivity. Overall, our study demonstrates chronic stress effects in PG through acute physiological dysregulation and elevated subjective negative mood. PG participants report a high desire to gamble, but state changes in gambling urges are unaffected by acute stress exposure. Additionally, trait-level impulsivity is associated with state features of PG, potentially contributing to gambling maintenance. This study addresses our limited understanding of stress processing in PG and has implications for neurobiological processes underlying its effects.

Fetched live from OpenAlex and de-inverted. Abstracts are not stored in this database: the inverted indexes are 8.6 GB of the frame’s 9.3 GB of text, and the host has 13 GB free.

How this classification was reachedexpand

Full frame distilled prediction

Teacher imitation

Not calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.

metaresearch head score (Codex)0.000
metaresearch head score (Gemma)0.000
Version: codex-gemma-dda1882f352aValidation status: machine_predicted_unvalidated
Candidate categoriesnone
Consensus categoriesnone
DomainCandidate signal: none · Consensus signal: none
Study designCandidate signal: Observational · Consensus signal: Observational
GenreCandidate signal: Empirical · Consensus signal: Empirical
Teacher disagreement score0.022
Threshold uncertainty score0.660

Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category

CategoryCodexGemma
Metaresearch0.0000.000
Meta-epidemiology (narrow)0.0000.000
Meta-epidemiology (broad)0.0000.000
Bibliometrics0.0010.001
Science and technology studies0.0000.000
Scholarly communication0.0000.000
Open science0.0000.000
Research integrity0.0000.000
Insufficient payload (model declined to judge)0.0000.000

Machine scores (provisional)

The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.

Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.

Opus teacher head0.048
GPT teacher head0.356
Teacher spread0.307 · how far apart the two teachers sit on this one work
Validation statusscore_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from it

Classification

machine, unvalidated

Machine predicted; a candidate call from one teacher head, not a consensus.

The models applied no category: nothing in the taxonomy fit this work.
Study designObservational
Domainnot available
GenreEmpirical

How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".

Quick stats

Citations0
Published2025
Admission routes2
Has abstractyes

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