Michelle Jarick

Misinterpreting ‘winning’ in multiline slot machine games

On multiline slot machines, ‘wins’ often amount to less than the spin wager, resulting in a monetary loss to the gambler. Nevertheless, these losses disguised as wins (LDWs) are accompanied by potentially reinforcing audiovisual feedback. A concern for gambling behaviour is whether or not players categorize LDWs as wins or losses, as miscategorization could effectively increase the reinforcement rate of these games. The purpose of this study was to evaluate whether novice gamblers psychologically miscategorize LDWs. Forty-seven novices (undergraduate students) played 200 spins on an actual slot machine with credits, then estimated how often they won. It was found that the more LDWs players were exposed to, the higher their win estimates. In a subsequent ‘think out loud’ playing session, the majority of novices also verbally miscategorized LDWs as wins. We conclude that LDWs could increase the reinforcement rate of these games, despite not increasing the payout to the gambler.

The duality of gaze: eyes extract and signal social information during sustained cooperative and competitive dyadic gaze.

In contrast to non-human primate eyes, which have a dark sclera surrounding a dark iris, human eyes have a white sclera that surrounds a dark iris. This high contrast morphology allows humans to determine quickly and easily where others are looking and infer what they are attending to. In recent years an enormous body of work has used photos and schematic images of faces to study these aspects of social attention, e.g., the selection of the eyes of others and the shift of attention to where those eyes are directed. However, evolutionary theory holds that humans did not develop a high contrast morphology simply to use the eyes of others as attentional cues; rather they sacrificed camouflage for communication, that is, to signal their thoughts and intentions to others. In the present study we demonstrate the importance of this by taking as our starting point the hypothesis that a cornerstone of non-verbal communication is the eye contact between individuals and the time that it is held. In a single simple study we show experimentally that the effect of eye contact can be quickly and profoundly altered merely by having participants, who had never met before, play a game in a cooperative or competitive manner. After the game participants were asked to make eye contact for a prolonged period of time (10 min). Those who had played the game cooperatively found this terribly difficult to do, repeatedly talking and breaking gaze. In contrast, those who had played the game competitively were able to stare quietly at each other for a sustained period. Collectively these data demonstrate that when looking at the eyes of a real person one both acquires and signals information to the other person. This duality of gaze is critical to non-verbal communication, with the nature of that communication shaped by the relationship between individuals, e.g., cooperative or competitive.

9 is Always on top: Assessing the automaticity of synaesthetic number-forms

For number-form synaesthetes, digits occupy idiosyncratic spatial locations. Atypical to the mental number line that extends horizontally, the synaesthete (L) experiences the numbers 1-10 vertically. We used a spatial cueing task to demonstrate that Ls attention could be automatically directed to locations within her number-space - being faster to detect targets appearing in synaesthetically cued locations. We sought to eliminate any influence of strategy on Ls performance by: (a) shortening the cue-target onset to 150 ms, (b) making the cues counterpredictive, and (c) instructing L to use an opposing strategy. If Ls performance was attributable to intentionally using the cue to predict target location, these manipulations should eliminate any cuing effects consistent with her synaesthesia. However, L showed an attentional bias compatible with her number-form, except when explicitly instructed of the opposing strategy and given enough time (800 ms). Therefore, we attribute Ls resilient cueing effects to the automaticity of her number-form.

Eye contact affects attention more than arousal as revealed by prospective time estimation

Eye contact can both increase arousal and engage attention. Because these two changes impact time estimation differently, we were able to use a prospective time estimation task to assess the relative changes in arousal and attention during eye contact. Pairs of participants made a 1-minute prospective time estimate while sitting side-by-side and performing three different gaze trials: looking at the wall away from their partner (baseline/away trials), looking at their partner’s profile (profile trials), or making eye contact with their partner (eye contact trials). We found that participants produced significantly longer estimates when they were engaged in eye contact, more so than when they looked at another person’s profile or baseline. As research has shown that people produce shorter estimates during arousing events and longer estimates when attention is captured, we attribute this difference to the attention-demanding process of interacting with another person, via mutual eye contact, over and above any changes in arousal.

Do you see what I hear? Vantage point preference and visual dominance in a time-space synaesthete

Time-space synaesthetes “see” time units organized in a spatial form. While the structure might be invariant for most synaesthetes, the perspective by which some view their calendar is somewhat flexible. One well-studied synaesthete L adopts different viewpoints for months seen vs. heard. Interestingly, L claims to prefer her auditory perspective, even though the month names are represented visually upside down. To verify this, we used a spatial-cueing task that included audiovisual month cues. These cues were either congruent with Ls preferred “auditory” viewpoint (auditory-only and auditory + month inverted) or incongruent (upright visual-only and auditory + month upright). Our prediction was that L would show enhanced cueing effects (larger response time difference between valid and invalid targets) following the audiovisual congruent cues since both elicit the “preferred” auditory perspective. Also, when faced with conflicting cues, we predicted L would choose the preferred auditory perspective over the visual perspective. As we expected, L did show enhanced cueing effects following the audiovisual congruent cues that corresponded with her preferred auditory perspective, but that the visual perspective dominated when L was faced with both viewpoints simultaneously. The results are discussed with relation to the reification hypothesis of sequence space synaesthesia (Eagleman, 2009).

Losses disguised as wins in multiline slots: using an educational animation to reduce erroneous win overestimates

Abstract Slot machines are available in several countries, with multiline games growing in popularity. Interestingly, many audiovisually reinforced small ‘wins’ in multiline games are in fact monetary losses – outcomes referred to as losses disguised as wins (LDWs). Research suggests that LDWs cause players to overestimate how many times they remember actually winning during a playing session. The study sought to replicate this finding and see if a short educational animation about LDWs could significantly reduce this LDW-triggered win overestimation effect. It employed a mixed design, with animation viewed (LDW, control) as the between-subjects factor, and game played (200 spins on a few LDW or many LDW game; game order counterbalanced) as the within-subjects factor. Fifty-four novice participants estimated how many times they won more than they wagered in each game. In the control animation group, the study replicated the LDW-triggered win overestimation effect for participants playing the many LDW game. Crucially, win overestimates were significantly reduced in this many LDW game for players exposed to the LDW animation. The study concludes that LDWs can lead novice gamblers to remember winning more often than they actually do during a playing session, but educating participants about LDWs can reduce these erroneous win overestimates.