Gambling prevention with adolescents: The effectiveness of a dual process perspective in targeted intervention

Among the factors which contribute to the development of negative consequences related to gambling in adolescence, the role of gambling-related cognitive distortions, i.e. a wide array of different kind of erroneous beliefs and irrational thoughts on gambling, has been highlighted. Following dual-process theories on cognitive functioning (e.g., Stanovich, 2004; Toplak et al., 2007), recently it has been verified a model in which mindware gap, i.e., susceptibility to the gambler’s fallacy, and contaminated mindware, i.e., superstitious thinking, were the antecedents of gambling-related cognitive distortions. Based on this model, a universal preventive program aimed at acting on probabilistic reasoning and superstitious thinking resulted to be effective in reducing gambling-related cognitions (Donati et al., 2018). The aim of this study was to investigate the utility of this approach in decrementing erroneous beliefs about gambling and enhancing knowledge of randomness among at-risk adolescents. Participants were 22 male adolescents (Mean Age = 15.84, SD=.79) attending the second level of a technical-industrial school in a suburban area in Florence (Italy) largely frequented by immigrants and people with low SES. A pre- and post-test design was conducted: Before the intervention, participants completed the revised form of the Gambling Related Cognitions Scale (Donati & Primi, in preparation), the Random Knowledge Events Test (REKT; Turner et al., 2006), and the Gambling Behavior Scale – For Adolescents (GBS-A; Primi et al., 2015), and they filled out again the GRCS-RA and the REKT after two weeks by the end of the intervention. The intervention consisted in two didactic activities conducted in classroom by a trainer and focused on reasoning about the correct meaning of gambling, randomness, probabilistic reasoning biases, superstitious thinking, and cognitive distortion, particularly the bias related to the belief in controlling and predicting random events. Results showed that at the pre-test, 83% were past-year gamblers and the half of them showed at-risk or disordered gambling. A pairwise t-test attested a significant reduction of gambling-related cognitions (t(11)=2.67, p=.022, Cohen’s d=.77) among the adolescents who attended both the units of the intervention from the pre-test (M=34.50, SD=7.48) to the post-test (M=27.83, SD=10.47), and also a significant improvement of random knowledge (t(11)=-2.43, p=.033, Cohen’s d=.70, Mpre-test=59.17, SD=5.34, Mpost-test=62.67, SD=6.11). Findings suggest that gambling-related distortions and understanding of randomness can be reduced with at-risk adolescent by using dual process theory as theoretical model.