Co-Principal Investigators      Tony Toneatto & Adam S. Goodie
Co-Investigators                        Martin Zack, Kirk Warren Brown, W. Keith Campbell, Chad E. Lakey
Location of Research               CAMH & University of Georgia
Contact Person                          Tony Toneatto, Ph.D, C. Psych
                                                       tony_toneatto@camh.net

Mindfulness is a construct that denotes increased attention and awareness to current events and experience, and has demonstrated potential relevance for intervention upon gambling-related problems, as well as the prevention of such problems. The proposed multi-session study will help to further elucidate the role that mindfulness plays in the gambling behavior of those with gambling-related problems, and further our understanding of the manner in which mindfulness serves to attenuate the judgment and decision-making biases that uphold these problems. We anticipate that specific behaviors related to gambling and gambling-related problems can be related to trait (enduring) and state (momentary) mindfulness. The proposed study will test these hypotheses directly. A three-session study will draw on both a clinical population of pathological gamblers and a community sample of level 2 gamblers. Pathological gamblers, aged 18 years and older, will be recruited from the Greater Metropolitan Toronto community. A target sample of 120 participants will be sought. Level 2 gamblers aged 18 years and older will be recruited from the community of Athens, Georgia, U.S.A. A target sample of 100 participants will be sought. Approximately equal numbers of men and women will be recruited for both samples. Eligible participants from both populations will be invited for two laboratory sessions of two hours' duration apiece, and in between will be asked to maintain electronic diaries of gambling behavior and state mindfulness for two weeks. Specifically, in the laboratory-based Session 1, participants will be oriented to the study and will complete assessments of trait mindfulness (Mindful Attention Awareness Scale or MAAS; Brown & Ryan, 2003), gambling involvement and severity, and judgment and decision making (Georgia Gambling Task, or GGT; Goodie, 2003). In Session 2, participants will record their naturally occurring gambling behavior and associated problems and state-level mindfulness using Personal Digital Assistants (PDAs) for a two-week period. In Session 3, participants will return to the lab to engage in an experimental task involving either an audio-based mindfulness induction or a filler task (Broderick, 2005; Brown & Broderick, 2007) followed by the Iowa Gambling Task (IGT; Bechara, Damasio, Damasio, & Anderson, 1994). The study has several primary hypotheses: (1) Trait mindfulness will be associated with less severe gambling problems and with superior performance on the GGT (session 1). (2) Trait and state mindfulness will predict less gambling, fewer gambling problems, and more realistic expectations of gambling experience during the two-week diary period (session 2). (3) Using an experimental design to bolster support for the two previous hypotheses, mindfulness induction will improve performance on the IGT (session 3). The study will seek to determine whether these effects are moderated by gender.