Pavlovian and instrumental conditioning in the early stages of gaming disorder and buying-shopping disorder (Presentation)

This presentation was held during the 7th International Conference on Behavioral Addictions (ICBA 2022) June 20–22, 2022 in Nottingham, United Kingdom.

Background: The ability of conditioned stimuli to evoke drug seeking plays an important role in the development and maintenance of substance-related addictions. In the course of addic tion, and especially under the influence of stress (Schwabe & Wolf, 2009), such cue-elicited drug seeking may take form of stimulus-response habits that are insensitive to reward devalu ation (Everitt & Robbins, 2016). Similar mechanisms may underlie behavioral addictions, however studies examining these relationships are sparse. A paradigm which allows study ing the influence of conditioned stimuli on instrumental reward-seeking is the Pavlovian-to Instrumental Transfer (PIT) paradigm. Mostly used in the study of substance-related addic tions, the paradigm has only recently been adapted to online-gaming and online-shopping (Vogel et al., 2018). Using the PIT paradigm, the project presented here investigates whether stress increases cue-conditioned instrumental responding in early stages of gaming disorder and buying-shopping disorder. Furthermore, by implementing a devaluation procedure, it should be clarified if the behavior demonstrated is more in line with habitual or with goal-di rected behavior. Method: Participants are individuals with risky gaming behavior, individuals with risky buying-shopping behavior and two matched control groups. After learning of the conditioned responses, participants undergo a stress or control condition, before performing the remaining phases of the PIT paradigm. Instrumental responding in the presence of appli cation-related cues will be compared between the groups. Results & Conclusion: Preliminary data will be presented and discussed. Funding: The study is carried out in the context of the Research Unit ACSID, FOR2974, funded by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG, German Research Foundation) – 411232260