'We also noted that participants showed greater pupil dilation, suggesting that individuals were more aroused or engaged when winning outcomes were paired with sensory cues.' 'Using eye-tracker technology, we were able to see that people were paying less attention to information about the odds of winning on a particular gamble when money imagery and casino jingles accompanied the wins,' said the study's senior author Catharine Winstanley, professor in the UBC department of psychology and investigator at the Djavad Mowafaghian Centre for Brain Health. They found money imagery and slot machine sounds can directly influence an individual's decisions. To determine if this would also be the case for humans, researchers had more than 100 adults play laboratory gambling games that featured sensory feedback modelled after the 'bells and whistles' used to signal winning in real slot machines. The latest study was prompted by earlier UBC research that found rats were more willing to take risks when their food rewards were accompanied by flashing lights and jingles.

'Overall, people took more risks when playing the more casino-like games, regardless of the odds.' 'We found that an individual's choices were less guided by the odds of winning when the casino-like audiovisual features were present in our laboratory gambling game,' said UBC postdoctoral research fellow and the study's lead author Mariya Cherkasova. The findings, published today in JNeurosci, the journal from the Society for Neuroscience, suggest that sensory features in casinos may directly influence a player's decisions and encourage riskier choices - raising new concerns that these features may promote problem gambling.

Slot machine flashing light