New research has linked a pattern
of impulsiveness in young boys with gambling problems in late adolescence. According
to researchers at Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health, boys
considered to be in a “high impulsivity track” as early as first grade doubled
the odds of meeting criteria for at risk/problem gambling, and tripled the odds
of meeting criteria for problem gambling. Impulsivity is defined as a tendency
to make rush decisions without carefully considering potential negative
consequences.
The researchers studied 310 males
from first grade to late adolescence in an urban community in Baltimore. About
87 percent were African American, while 70 percent were in a low socioeconomic
group. Ratings of classroom behavior were based on a Teacher Report of
Classroom Behavior Checklist and included items such as “waits for turn,”
“interrupts,” and “blurts out answers.” Annual assessments were made from ages
11 through 15. According to the researchers, the students fell into two
distinct trajectories: 41 percent had a high impulse trajectory, while 59
percent were in a lower impulse trajectory.
While impulsivity tended to
decline as the boys matured, those with high levels of impulsivity in first
grade were far more likely to remain among the 41 percent at adolescence, the
researchers noted. Gambling behavior was assessed through interviews with
students at ages 17, 19, and 20. Self-reported gambling behavior was assessed
using the South Oaks Gambling Screen-Revised for Adolescents. The investigators
found that boys in the high impulse trajectory group were twice as likely to
meet the criteria for “at-risk” gambling behavior and three times the risk for
problem gambling.
Overall, 67 percent of the boys
in the study reported they engaged in some gambling, with 20 percent meeting
the criteria for at-risk gambling, and 9 percent meeting the criteria for
problem gamblers. “Our findings reveal that there is a considerable link
between youth impulsivity in the younger years and gambling issues as older
teens,” says Silvia Martins, MD, PhD, assistant professor of Epidemiology at
Columbia’s Mailman School of Public Health. “This has important implications
and provides clear research support for targeting impulsivity to prevent youth
problem gambling.”
While other research has shown a
connection between impulsiveness and gambling, those studies measured
impulsivity at a single point-in-time and gambling either concurrently or at a
later point-in-time, rather than linking gambling in the late teens to traits
of impulsiveness as early as first grade, according to the researchers, who
note the earlier research was with a predominantly white population. The
researchers note that this study also is different because it specifically
considers socioeconomic status of urban minority youth, a population that is
disproportionately more likely to exhibit both impulsivity and problem
gambling. “We see this as a study strength, given the small amount of research
there is on the impulsivity-gambling association among urban minority
populations,” said Martins. “However, generalizations to the larger population
should be made with caution.” “We also chose to base our study on males only
because females tend to exhibit lower levels of impulsivity and show different
patterns of development compared to males,” she added.
The Columbia researchers also
used teacher-reported assessments rather than participants’ self-reported
measures of impulsivity as was the case in earlier works. “Teacher ratings of
youth impulsivity tend to be more consistent and reliable for predicting future
psychiatric disorder diagnoses compared to adolescent self-reports,” she said. “From
our findings we see that teaching impulse control early in elementary school
may have a long term benefit in decreasing the likelihood of youth following an
elevated trajectory of impulsivity.” The study appears online in the
journal Addiction.
Source: Psych Central
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