Medicine and Health Sciences Commons^™

Gambling Education Programs For Adolescents: A Systematic Review, Brittany Keen, Alex Blaszczynski, Fadi Anjoul

International Conference on Gambling & Risk Taking

Around two thirds of Australian adolescents aged 10-14 years old have gambled in the last year, and rates of problem gambling are up to four times higher among adolescents than in the adult population. Schools provide a unique opportunity to intervene in cognitive and behavioural development, and while several gambling education programs exist in schools across Australia and internationally, few have been empirically evaluated. The purpose of this review was to provide a systematic appraisal of the published research on gambling education programs for adolescents. The review aimed to identify the number and quality of studies that have evaluated gambling …

The Cost Of Getting Lost: Measuring The Slot Machine ‘Zone’ With Attentional Dual Tasks, W. Spencer Murch

International Conference on Gambling & Risk Taking

A contemporary stance on regular and problematic electronic gaming machine (EGM) gamblers argues that these individuals use machine gambling as a means of escaping aversive feelings rather than as a means of seeking out excitement. Often called “The Slot Machine Zone,” this hypothesis currently rests on qualitative and anecdotal data suggesting that machine gamblers are somehow lost in the game (Schüll, 2012). Conceptually similar to work on flow and dissociation, the zone hypothesis predicts that problematic EGM play is associated with 1) increased self-reported dissociation / immersion, 2) attenuated peripheral attention, and 3) a positive physiological state as a result. …

Evaluating Virtual Reality Simulators As A Training Tool For Minimally Invasive Surgery, Jennifer F. Louie, Misa Shimono

Human Factors and Applied Psychology Student Conference

Minimally invasive surgery offers a number of advantages over traditional open surgeries, including faster patient recovery time, fewer side effects, and improved cosmesis. However, there are also a number of difficulties involved with performing this type of surgery, including poor visuo-spatial mapping, poor depth perception, and mechanical difficulties (e.g., the fulcrum effect). Considering the decrease in residency training hours required for surgical trainees in 2011 (Rajaram et al., 2014), it is essential that surgical trainees employ training methods that would best result in high accuracy and efficiency.

Simulator-based training addresses many of the issues of traditional master-apprentice surgical training methods …