Lower caution, not inhibitory control, predicts gambling severity – a Registered Report

Abstract

Models of gambling disorder, along with other addiction-related conditions, identify impulsive traits as a key component to developing challenging behaviors. This is supported by empirical findings indicating that individuals with gambling disorder exhibit poorer response inhibition, a facet of impulsivity. However, studies on individual differences in inhibition often find weak correlations between different inhibition tasks, suggesting that cognitive processes other than a general inhibitory control ability may contribute to task performance, and by extension, to gambling. The current study applied cognitive modeling to dissociate the cognitive processes involved in response inhibition tasks and examined which cognitive processes are predictive of gambling severity. A total of 422 participants completed the Stroop, Go/No-go and Stop-Signal tasks alongside the Problem Gambling Severity Index (PGSI) questionnaire. The drift diffusion model was used to decompose traditional task performance data into parameters which were then grouped into four distinct cognitive processes: inhibitory control, general processing speed, response caution, and perceptual/motor speed. Preregistered regression analyses indicate that lower caution, rather than inhibition, is associated with higher gambling severity. Whereas previous research had focused on inhibitory control as a risk factor for gambling behaviors, as well as a target for potential interventions (e.g. training apps), these findings suggest rather that the strategic processes underlying decision making – caution – are important to consider.