PROBABILISTIC REASONING, SUPERSTITIOUS THINKING AND GAMBLING BEHAVIOR IN CHILDREN AND ADOLESCENTS

Research in the field of gambling in youth predominantly focused on adolescents and young adults showing that several and distinct individual and environmental factors increase the risk for gambling problem severity. Among these factors, it has been found that susceptibility to the gambler’s fallacy and superstitious thinking are risk factors for problem gambling. However, at least two issues can be defined as less-investigated: i) very few studies have taken into account gambling’s individual and environmental correlates among children attending primary school, ii) not enough attention has been paid to the role of protective factors, i.e., factors which can act to significantly protect youth from gambling behavior and related risk. Following these premises, the aim of this work is to analyze individual and environmental factors in adolescents and children, taking into account the role of probabilistic reasoning, superstitious thinking, gambling advertising, and parental gambling.