Intermittent Rewards Research Articles

Digital Slot Machines: Social Media Platforms as Attentional Scaffolds

In this paper we introduce the concept of attentional scaffolds and show the resemblance between social media platforms and slot machines, both functioning as hostile attentional scaffolds. The first section establishes the groundwork for the concept of attentional scaffolds and draws parallels to the mechanics of slot machines, to argue that social media platforms aim to capture users’ attention to maximize engagement through a system of intermittent rewards. The second section shifts focus to the interplay between emotions and attention, revealing how online attentional capture through emotionally triggering stimuli leads to distraction. The final section elucidates the collective implications of scaffolding attention through social media platforms. The examination of phenomena such as emotional contagion and the emergence of group emotions underscores the transition from individual experiences to shared collective outcomes. Employing online moral outrage as a case study, we illustrate how negative emotions serve as scaffolds for individuals’ attention, propagate within social groups, and give rise to collective attitudes.

The Effect of Gamification on Employee Boredom and Performance†

ABSTRACTThis study investigates the effect of gamification on employee boredom and performance in a repetitive work process. In video games, loot is unpredictable, intermittent rewards used to motivate players to repeat boring actions. In a 2 × 1 laboratory experiment, I examine how gamification, featuring nonmonetary loot point rewards, may impact boredom and performance. I find that individuals have mixed opinions. On the one hand, they recognize the emotional value of gamification and find the repetitive work process more attractive. On the other hand, they experience a violation of fairness even though the point rewards do not impact their monetary payoff. My findings help reconcile the seemingly contradictory predictions from two sets of motivation theories. While some conventional theories (e.g., equity theory, expectancy theory, and agency theory) suggest that unpredictable rewards negatively affect motivation, both the reinforcement theory of motivation and findings from neuroscience research indicate a bright side to those rewards. Due to the countervailing effects, I do not find a significant difference in either boredom or performance between conditions. My results show that when gamifying repetitive work processes with unpredictable rewards such as loot points, managers need to address fairness concerns while maintaining the motivational properties of gamification.This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved.

The Intrigue of Intermittent Reward and Cost: Unveiling Their Influence in Real Life

This paper examines the role of Intermittent Cost (Punishment) in influencing the behavior of children who exhibit aggressive behavior through a laboratory Experiment. In the experiment, children in the treatment group were randomly placed in solitary confinement for attacking others. It is expected that Intermittent costs will reduce children’s aggressive behavior. The paper will also explore how Intermittent Cost and Reward work in the brain, finding that when people experience pleasurable stimuli, the brain starts secreting dopamine, so much so that it affects our behavior and expectations. In addition, experiments have found that when rewards are intermittent, the brain experiences higher arousal levels. This explains why people always crave cookies or continue to use social media and gamble. Finally, this paper will also discuss the possible application of Intermittent Cost and Reward in different aspects, which can help us formulate some policies and increase the flexibility of users.

Unpredictable, intermittent access to sucrose or water promotes increased reward pursuit in rats

Reward uncertainty can sensitize reward pathways, promoting increased reward-seeking and -taking behaviours. This is relevant to human conditions such as pathological gambling, eating disorders and drug addiction. In the context of addiction, preclinical self-administration procedures have been developed to model the intermittency of human drug use. These intermittent-access (IntA) procedures involve intermittent but predictable access to drug during self-administration sessions. However, human drug use typically involves intermittent and unpredictable drug access. We introduce a new procedure modeling unpredictable, intermittent access (UIntA) to a reinforcer, and we compare it to procedures that provide predictable reinforcer availability; continuous (ContA) or intermittent (IntA) access. Female rats self-administered water or liquid sucrose in daily hour-long sessions. IntA and ContA rats had access to a fixed volume of water or sucrose (0.1 ml), under a fixed ratio 3 schedule of reinforcement. IntA rats had predictable 5-min reinforcer ON and 25-min reinforcer OFF periods. ContA rats had 60 min of reinforcer access during each session. For UIntA rats, variation in the length of ON and OFF periods (1, 5 or 9 min/period), response requirement (variable ratio 3 schedule of reinforcement), reinforcer probability (50%) and quantity (0, 0.1 or 0.2 ml) introduced reward uncertainty. Following 14 daily self-administration sessions, UIntA rats showed the highest levels of responding for water or sucrose under progressive ratio conditions, responding under extinction conditions, and cue-induced reinstatement of sucrose seeking. Thus, unpredictable, intermittent reward access promotes increased reward pursuit. This has implications for modeling addiction and other disorders of increased reward seeking.

Dopamine-transporter heterozygous rats carrying maternal wild-type allele are more vulnerable to the development of compulsive behavior.

Compulsivity is defined as an unstoppable tendency toward repetitive and habitual actions, which are reiterated despite negative consequences. Polydipsia is induced preclinically by intermittent reward, leading rodents to ingest large amounts of fluids. We focused on the role of dopamine transporter (DAT) and inheritance factors in compulsive behavior. Our sample consisted of DAT heterozygous (HET) rats with different genetic inheritance (MAT-HET, born from WT-dams×KO-fathers; MIX-HET, born from HET-dams × KO-fathers). As controls, we used both wild-type (WT) rats and their socially-isolated (WTi) siblings. We ran the schedule-induced polydipsia (SIP) protocol, to induce compulsive behavior; then the Y-maze and marble-burying tests, to verify its actual development. Only MAT-HET (who inherited the functional DAT allele from the WT mother) is vulnerable to developing compulsive behavior. MAT-HET rats drank increasingly more water during SIP; they showed significant perseverance in the Y-maze test and exhibited compulsive actions in the marble-burying test. Interestingly, compulsive behaviors of MAT-HET rats correlated with expression ex vivo of different genes in different areas. Regarding the prefrontal cortex (PFC), D2R correlatedwith Y-maze "perseverance" in addition to BDNF; considering the amygdala (AMY), both D3R and OXTR correlated with SIP "licks." Indeed, compulsivity may be linked to D2R and BDNF in PFC, while extreme anxiety in MAT-HET rats may be associated with D3R and OXTR in the AMY. These results confirm some similarities between MAT-HET and DAT-KO subjects, and link the epigenetic context of the DAT gene to the development of compulsive behavior.

How Students Choose Careers: Understanding the Career Choices, Motivations and Problems of Agricultural Students in Anambra State, Nigeria

The study accessed agricultural undergraduate students’ reasons for choosing agriculture as a career, sources of their motivation, and problems encountered in their study. Data were collected through a structured questionnaire administered on 100 respondents selected through simple random sampling process from two Faculties of Agriculture of two universities: Chukwuemeka Odumegwu Ojukwu University (COOU) and Nnamdi Azikiwe University (NAU) both in the Anambra State of Nigeria. Some of the information provided by the respondents was verified through 4 in-depth interviews. Descriptive statistics such as percentage, frequency distributions, and Tables were used in analyzing the data. The result show that the majority of the students of COOU (48%) and NAU (44%) study agriculture through a constriction (admission offer outside their original career choice) and that the students’ parents were their major source of motivation (64%). The result further reveals that financial constraints (48%), unfavorable government policy (24%), and poor teaching aids were the major problems of agricultural undergraduate students in the State. The study concludes that sustainable involvement of youths in agricultural development is a felt need which requires diversified motivation attention. The study recommends proactive measures such as intermittent rewards and scholarship awards to agricultural students, early stimulation of student’s interest in agriculture, formulation of suitable agricultural policy and provision of adequate teaching facilities and aids to agricultural students by the Universities Management and their Visitors, Nongovernmental Organizations in agriculture and Philanthropists.

Serious games for smoking prevention and cessation: A systematic review of game elements and game effects

ObjectiveSerious health games might have the potential to prevent tobacco smoking and its health consequences, depending on the inclusion of specific game elements. This review aimed to assess the composition of serious games and their effects on smoking initiation prevention and cessation and behavioral determinants.Materials and MethodsWe systematically searched MEDLINE, Embase, PsycINFO, and Web of Science for publications that evaluated serious games aimed at changing smoking behavior or behavioral determinants. A taxonomy by King et al was used to classify game elements.ResultsWe identified 15 studies, evaluating 14 unique serious games. All games combined multiple game elements (mean 5.5; range, 3-10). Most frequently used were general and intermittent rewards, theme and genre features, and punishments. Six studies on smoking prevention together assessed 20 determinants and found statistically significant positive effects for 8 determinants (eg, attitude, knowledge, intention). Of 7 studies on smoking cessation, 5 found positive, statistically significant effects on smoking cessation or status. These studies found statistically significant positive effects for 6 of 12 determinants (eg, self-efficacy, attitude, intention). The majority of included studies had poor or fair methodological quality, lacked follow-up measures, and had fixed (as opposed to free, on-demand) play sessions.ConclusionsSerious games included multiple types of game elements. The evidence from a number of studies suggests that games may have positive effects on smoking-related outcomes, particularly smoking cessation. However, as most studies had important methodological limitations, stronger designs are needed to demonstrate, quantify, and understand the effects of serious games.

Rewards interact with repetition-dependent learning to enhance long-term retention of motor memories.

The combination of behavioral experiences that enhance long-term retention remains largely unknown. Informed by neurophysiological lines of work, this study tested the hypothesis that performance-contingent monetary rewards potentiate repetition-dependent forms of learning, as induced by extensive practice at asymptote, to enhance long-term retention of motor memories. To this end, six groups of 14 participants (n=84) acquired novel motor behaviors by adapting to a gradual visuomotor rotation while these factors were manipulated. Retention was assessed 24 h later. While all groups similarly acquired the novel motor behaviors, results from the retention session revealed an interaction indicating that rewards enhanced long-term retention, but only when practice was extended to asymptote. Specifically, the interaction indicated that this effect selectively occurred when rewards were intermittently available (i.e., 50%), but not when they were absent (i.e., 0%) or continuously available (i.e., 100%) during acquisition. This suggests that the influence of rewards on extensive practice and long-term retention is nonlinear, as continuous rewards did not further enhance retention as compared with intermittent rewards. One possibility is that rewards' intermittent availability allows to maintain their subjective value during acquisition, which may be key to potentiate long-term retention.

"A" for Effort: Rewarding Effortful Retrieval Attempts Improves Learning From General Knowledge Errors in Women.

Previous research has shown that the prospect of attaining a reward can promote task-engagement, up-regulate attention toward reward-relevant information, and facilitate enhanced encoding of new information into declarative memory. However, past research on reward-based enhancement of declarative memory has focused primarily on paradigms in which rewards are contingent upon accurate responses. Yet, findings from test-enhanced learning show that making errors can also be useful for learning if those errors represent effortful retrieval attempts and are followed by corrective feedback. Here, we used a challenging general knowledge task to examine the effects of explicitly rewarding retrieval effort, defined as a semantically plausible answer to a question (referenced to a semantic knowledge database www.mangelslab.org/bknorms), regardless of response accuracy. In particular, we asked whether intermittent rewards following effortful incorrect responses facilitated learning from corrective feedback as measured by incidental learning outcomes on a 24–48 h delayed retest. Given that effort-contingent extrinsic rewards represent the intersection between an internal locus of control and competency, we compared participants in this “Effort” group to three other groups in a between-subjects design: a Luck group that framed rewards as related to participant-chosen lottery numbers (reward with internal control, not competence-based), a random Award group that framed rewards as computer generated (no control, not competence-based), and a Control group with no reward, but matched on all other task features. Both men and women in the Effort group showed increased self-reports of concentration and positive feelings following the receipt of rewards, as well as subjective effort on the retest, compared to the Control group. However, only women additionally exhibited performance benefits of effort framing on error correction. These benefits were found for both rewarded and non-rewarded trials, but only for correction of low confidence errors, suggesting that effort-contingent rewards produced task-level changes in motivation to learn less familiar information in women, rather than trial-level influences in encoding or consolidation. The Luck and Award groups did not demonstrate significant motivational or behavioral benefits for either gender. These results suggest that both reward context and gender are important factors contributing to the effectiveness of rewards as tools to enhance learning from errors.

“No voice or vote:” trauma-coerced attachment in victims of sex trafficking

ABSTRACTTrauma-coerced attachment (TCA)—often referred to as trauma bonding— has been noted and documented across various abusive contexts. TCA involves a powerful emotional dependency on the abusive partner and a shift in world- and self- view, which can result in feelings of gratitude or loyalty toward the abuser and denial or minimization of the coercion and abuse. The current study investigated TCA in a sex-trafficking context. Former victims of sex trafficking (N = 14) were interviewed for approximately 2–4 h using a semi-structured interview guide. An adaptation of grounded theory was utilized to code the interview transcripts for coercive control tactics, intermittent reward and punishment, and self-reported feelings, responses, and resistance/compliance toward the abuser. Coercive control tactics were present in all 14 narratives; intermittent reward and punishment was present in 10; and TCA emerged in varying severities (i.e., a continuum, rather than a dichotomy, of attachment). In addition to these findings, the current work proposes a systematic framework from which to study TCA, separating the processes involved in the formation of the traumatic attachment (i.e., implementation of coercive control tactics) from the outcomes of those tactics (i.e., dependency and adoption of abuser’s worldview).

Just-in-time response to reward as a function of ADHD symptom severity.

Attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) neuroimaging studies have identified substantial differences in reward-related circuits on a trial-by-trial basis. However, no research to date has evaluated the effect of motivational context on neural activity in settings with intermittent reward in ADHD. The present study was designed to identify neural processes underlying both immediate effects of reward and sustained effects of reward associated with motivational context in adult ADHD patients. We used a functional magnetic resonance imaging paradigm, including a time estimation task with constant versus intermittent reward conditions, in a sample of 21 medication-naïve adults with combined ADHD and 24 healthy adults. Although no between-group neural differences were detected, orbitofrontal activity dropped in association with high ADHD symptom severity during the transition from initial non-reward context blocks to subsequent reward context blocks. In turn, ADHD symptom severity predicted higher orbitofrontal activity in response to immediate reward versus no reward within reward context blocks. These results suggest that high ADHD symptom severity scorers adopted a 'just-in-time' strategy, involving the recruitment of reward processing brain areas in the face of immediate reward rather than a sustained response to motivational context.

The social dimensions of gambling among street youth in Mumbai: Is it really an addiction?

This mixed-methods, exploratory study investigates the gambling activities of street youth in Mumbai, India. Data from surveys and brief interviews of 70 youth aged 12–24, two focus groups, and ethnographic observations offer descriptive snapshots of the gambling behavior of participants. The article includes details about games played, popular venues, initiation patterns, time spent gambling, and interactions with the police. Street youth gamble for social benefits, such as group membership and fun; it is also a leisure activity enabling time to go by quickly. Individual benefits include intermittent rewards and a high after winning or being referred to as a gambler. The inability to save, the lack of recreation options, living in groups, and the environment of the streets structure and sustain gambling. This study discusses the group and social dimension of gambling among street youth, and how this dimension makes their participation different from adolescent gambling in general and General Addictions Theory. It contributes to the literature by emphasizing that for street youth the social/group aspects of gambling predominate the psychological. The paper concludes with a discussion of the implications for practice, highlighting the need to develop recreational, income-saving, and educational awareness programs.

Editors’ Note

Editors’ Note Craig R. Fox, Founding Co-Editor and Sim B Sitkin, Founding Co-Editor Welcome to the third issue of Behavioral Science & Policy (BSP). This issue includes a Spotlight Forum on prekindergarten (pre-K) education programs, an article on improving kindergarten through 12th grade school performance, and articles on health-related beliefs and habits. Given that BSP is still in its infancy, it is perhaps appropriate to focus this issue’s Spotlight on early childhood education and development programs. Ron Haskins, of the Brookings Institution, served as guest editor of this Spotlight section. He commissioned a terrific cluster of articles that examine the effectiveness of existing American early childhood interventions, including Head Start, state pre-K programs, and home visiting programs. These articles examine the extent to which pre-K interventions foster positive development and improve school readiness among children of low-income families, and they suggest ways in which these programs might be enhanced and better coordinated. Collectively, the spotlight articles provide a valuable, evidence-based road map for maximizing the potential of early childhood interventions. In particular, they call for improved theoretical conceptualization of how and why early childhood programs succeed, which is critical for driving programmatic innovations and enhancing methodology for measuring program effectiveness. Picking up after pre-K, an open contribution to this issue explores how policymakers might improve school performance in kindergarten through grade 12, drawing on insights from education and social psychology research. Brian Gill, Jennifer Lerner, and Paul Meosky observe that most school systems rely on an outcome-based form of accountability (notably, high-stakes testing), with mixed results. The authors identify three additional forms of accountability (rule based, market based, and professional) and review the evidence for their effectiveness in promoting school improvements. Ultimately, the authors recommend multiple complementary approaches. They propose that professional accountability shows the greatest promise for further development—for example, through greater classroom transparency, peer observation, coaching, and advanced teacher certification. This article is timely for American schools, as last year’s passage [End Page v] of the Every Student Succeeds Act by the U.S. Congress allows states greater latitude in designing their accountability policies. Finally, we include two articles that emerged from a 2015 workshop on health and well-being that was sponsored by the University of Southern California and cohosted by the Behavioral Science & Policy Association (BSPA). These articles highlight the importance of unconscious mental processes in driving health beliefs and behaviors. First, Wendy Wood and David Neal observe that although public health interventions have succeeded in increasing people’s knowledge of healthy behaviors and their intentions to engage in them, these programs typically fail to achieve sustained action by the public. The authors draw on behavioral research to identify keys to healthy habit formation that have produced sustained improvements in eating and exercising behaviors, especially when implemented together: repetition of desired behaviors, stable contextual cues to trigger habit performance, and intermittent rewards to reinforce these habits. The authors also provide keys to neutralizing unwanted habits. In a second article, Norbert Schwarz, Eryn Newman, and William Leach review how ease of cognitive processing influences the believability of facts and myths, such as the claimed link between vaccines and autism. They draw on these insights to suggest a number of policy approaches for making truthful public health information stick and harmful health myths fade. As always, we invite readers to contribute feedback to our editorial office so that we can improve future issues of BSP. We also encourage readers to engage with our parent organization, BSPA. This rapidly growing community consists of behavioral scientists, policy professionals, and other practitioners who have a shared interest in the thoughtful application of rigorous behavioral science research to policy and practice in ways that serve the public interest. In addition to joining BSPA, readers can sign up to receive our weekly and monthly roundups summarizing the latest news and developments in behavioral policy, and check out our PolicyShop blog that explores topics in greater depth. Readers can also engage with our community by attending a BSPA workshop or annual conference. Finally, we encourage you to volunteer time or resources to BSPA, which is a nonprofit, public benefit organization. Information...

Ambiguous incentives and the persistence of effort: Experimental evidence

When the assignment of incentives is uncertain, we study how the regularity and frequency of rewards and risk attitudes influence participation and effort. We contrast three incentive schemes in a real-effort experiment in which individuals decide when to quit: a continuous incentive scheme and two intermittent ones, fixed and random. In all treatments, we introduce a regime shift by withdrawing monetary rewards after the same unknown number of periods. In such an ambiguous environment, we show that less able and more risk averse players are less persistent in effort. Intermittent incentives lead to a greater persistence of effort, while continuous incentives entail exit as soon as payment stops. Randomness increases both earlier and later exiting. This selection effect in terms of ability and risk attitudes combined with the impact of intermittent rewards on persistence lead to an increase in mean performance after the regime shift when incentives are intermittent.

Ambiguous Incentives and the Persistence of Effort: Experimental Evidence

When the assignment of incentives is uncertain, we study how the regularity and frequency of rewards and risk attitudes influence participation and effort. We contrast three incentive schemes in a real-effort experiment in which individuals decide when to quit : a continuous incentive scheme and two intermittent ones, fixed and random. In all treatments, we introduce a regime shift by withdrawing monetary rewards after the same unknown number of periods. In such an ambiguous environment, we show that less able and more risk averse players are less persistent in effort. Intermittent incentives lead to a greater persistence of effort, while continuous incentives entail exit as soon as payment stops. Randomness increases both earlier and later exiting. This selection effect in terms of ability and risk attitudes combined with the impact of intermittent rewards on persistence lead to an increase in mean performance after the regime shift when incentives are intermittent.

Incentivizing Children's Fruit and Vegetable Consumption: Results of a United States Pilot Study of the Food Dudes Program

Preliminary evaluation in the United States (US) of a school-based fruit and vegetable (F/V) intervention, known as the Food Dudes (FD) program, developed in the United Kingdom. Over 16 days (Phase 1), elementary-school children (n = 253) watched short videos featuring heroic peers (the FD) eating F/V and received a reward for eating F/V served at lunchtime. In the 3 months that followed (Phase 2), children received increasingly intermittent rewards for eating F/V. Consumption was measured by photo analysis and assessment of skin carotenoids. Fruit and vegetable intake increased significantly after Phases 1 and 2 (P < .001 for both). This effect was most discriminable among children who consumed no fruit (n = 100) or no vegetables (n = 119) at pre-intervention baseline. Among these children, F/V intake (combined) increased by 0.49 (0.53) cups per day. The FD program can increase F/V intake in US elementary schools.

Activation of the central serotonergic system in response to delayed but not omitted rewards

The forebrain serotonergic system is a crucial component in the control of impulsive behaviours. However, there is no direct evidence for natural serotonin activity during behaviours for delayed rewards as opposed to immediate rewards. Herein we show that serotonin efflux is enhanced while rats perform a task that requires waiting for a delayed reward. We simultaneously measured the levels of serotonin and dopamine in the dorsal raphe nucleus using in vivo microdialysis. Rats performed a sequential food–water navigation task under three reward conditions: immediate, delayed and intermittent. During the delayed reward condition, in which the rat had to wait for up to 4 s at the reward sites, the level of serotonin was significantly higher than that during the immediate reward condition, whereas the level of dopamine did not change significantly. By contrast, during the intermittent reward condition, in which food was given on only about one-third of the site visits, the level of dopamine was lower than that during the immediate reward condition, whereas the level of serotonin did not change significantly. Dopamine efflux, but not serotonin efflux, was positively correlated with reward consumption during the task. There was no reciprocal relationship between serotonin and dopamine. This is the first direct evidence that activation of the serotonergic system occurs specifically in relation to waiting for a delayed reward.

Intermittent Reinforcement and the Persistence of Behavior: Experimental Evidence

When the assignment of incentives is uncertain, we study how the regularity and frequency of rewards and risk attitudes influence participation and effort. We contrast three incentive schemes in a real-effort experiment in which individuals decide when to quit: a continuous incentive scheme and two intermittent ones, fixed and random. In all treatments, we introduce a regime shift by withdrawing monetary rewards after the same unknown number of periods. In such an ambiguous environment, we show that less able and more risk averse players are less persistent in effort. Intermittent incentives lead to a greater persistence of effort, while continuous incentives entail exit as soon as payment stops. Randomness increases both earlier and later exiting. This selection effect in terms of ability and risk attitudes combined with the impact of intermittent rewards on persistence lead to an increase in mean performance after the regime shift when incentives are intermittent.

Prefrontal cortex mediation of cognitive enhancement in rewarding motivational contexts

Increasing the reward value of behavioral goals can facilitate cognitive processes required for goal achievement. This facilitation may be accomplished by the dynamic and flexible engagement of cognitive control mechanisms operating in distributed brain regions. It is still not clear, however, what are the characteristics of individuals, situations, and neural activation dynamics that optimize motivation-linked cognitive enhancement. Here we show that highly reward-sensitive individuals exhibited greater improvement of working memory performance in rewarding contexts, but exclusively on trials that were not rewarded. This effect was mediated by a shift in the temporal dynamics of activation within right lateral prefrontal cortex, from a transient to predominantly tonic mode, with an additional anticipatory transient boost. In contexts with intermittent rewards, a strategy of proactive cognitive control may enable globally optimal performance to facilitate reward attainment. Reward-sensitive individuals appear preferentially motivated to adopt this resource-demanding strategy, resulting in paradoxical benefits selectively for nonrewarded events.

Video Game Playing and Gambling in Adolescents: Common Risk Factors

ABSTRACT Video games and gambling often contain very similar elements with both providing intermittent rewards and elements of randomness. Furthermore, at a psychological and behavioral level, slot machine gambling, video lottery terminal (VLT) gambling and video game playing share many of the same features. Despite the similarities between video game playing and gambling there have been very few studies that have specifically examined video game playing in relation to gambling behavior. This study inquired about the nature of adolescent video game playing, gambling activities, and associated factors. A questionnaire was completed by 996 (549 females, 441 males, 6 unspecified) participants from grades 7–11, who ranged in age from 10–17 years. Overall, the results of the study found a clear relationship between video game playing and gambling in adolescents, with problem gamblers being significantly more likely than non-problem gamblers or non-gamblers to spend excessive amounts of time playing video games. Problem gamblers were also significantly more likely than non-problem gamblers or non-gamblers to rate themselves as very good or excellent video game players. Furthermore, problem gamblers were more likely to report that they found video games, similar to electronic machine gambling, to promote dissociation and to be arousing and/or relaxing.