Impulsivity at Age Seven Associated with Gambling Problems during Adulthood
by: NCRG Staff | Nov 12, 2012
What if you could examine a group of seven-year-olds and predict which of them were more likely to someday develop a gambling disorder? A recent study in the journal Addiction attempts to do just that by analyzing the association between impulsive behavior at age seven and the development of problem gambling by adulthood. The authors found that, compared to their non-impulsive counterparts, children who exhibited impulsive behaviors at age seven were 3.09 times more likely to report problem gambling behavior in later years. Read on for more details about this investigation, the first to predict gambling problems over a 30-year span.
Dr. Howard Shaffer, director of the Division on Addiction at Cambridge Health Alliance, a Harvard Medical School teaching affiliate, spoke on the subject of 
Researchers have debated whether or not casino games, such as poker or sports betting, should be considered games of skill or games of chance. What qualifies a game to be labeled a “game of skill” by researchers? This is the subject being examined by 2012 NCRG Outstanding Poster Award Winner Dr. Gerhard Meyer and his colleagues at the University of Bremen in Germany in the poster titled “Is Poker a Game of Skill or Chance? A Quasi-Experimental Study.”
Recovery from addiction can be a fluid process, with successful times and relapses. During her talk at the 13th annual NCRG Conference on Gambling and Addiction, Alexandre Laudet, Ph.D., stated that the science of addiction needs to be complemented with the science of recovery. This will help to increase our understanding of the components, patterns paths and predictors of long-term recovery.
To understand the big picture of what constitutes a recovery from a gambling disorder, it is best to look at it from both national and local perspectives. The 13th annual NCRG Conference on Gambling and Addiction kicked off Tuesday morning with a presentation from H. Westley Clark, M.D., J.D., M.P.H., director of the Center for Substance Abuse Treatment (CSAT) in the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA). SAMHSA’s mission is to reduce the impact of substance abuse and mental illness in America’s communities.
