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Full-Text Articles in Cognitive Psychology
The Cost Of Getting Lost: Measuring The Slot Machine ‘Zone’ With Attentional Dual Tasks, W. Spencer Murch
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. …