José C Perales

• Professor (Associate) at University of Granada

Background Emotion regulation strategies are central in models of gambling disorder. However, findings regarding the association between gambling-related problems and these strategies are mixed and mostly based on case-control studies with self-report measures. Methods This study examines associations of gambling problems' severity (SOGS) and gamb...

Purpose of Review This preregistered review aims to identify and assess the effectiveness of intervention tools designed to reverse, counteract, or reduce compulsivity in behavioral addictions and related conditions. The review covers reconditioning techniques, non-invasive brain stimulation, and mindfulness/non-judgmental observation interventions...

Prison inmate samples present a high prevalence of impulsivity- and compulsivity-related behavioral problems. The Probabilistic Reversal Learning Task (PRLT) is a useful tool to assess decision-making, and we explore its associations with inmates’ personality disorder (antisocial personality disorder, APD; obsessive-compulsive personality disorder,...

Background: Addiction models highlight the impact of craving in driving compulsive behaviors. Craving states, which are inherently emotional, can be modulated by both incidental and intentional emotion regulation mechanisms. The former operate pre-consciously, while the latter operate during conscious craving stages. Method: Craving is experimental...

ABSTRACT Physical exercise is considered as a promising medication free and cost-effective adjunct treatment for substance use disorders (SUD). Nevertheless, evidence regarding the effectiveness of these interventions is currently limited, thereby signaling the need to better understand the mechanisms underlying their impact on SUD, in order to ref...

This study investigates the psychometric properties of the Spanish version of the Motives for Online Gaming Questionnaire (MOGQ). We explored the factor structure and construct validity of the MOGQ through its relationships with gaming disorder symptoms (IGD-20) and impulsivity traits. We also analyzed if sociodemographic variables and gaming habit...

Craving plays a fundamental role in decision-making models of non-substance addictive behaviors (see complementary presentation by the same authors in this conference). Craving is conceptualized as an emotion-driven state. Therefore, its control is a matter of emotion regulation, with two types of mechanisms involved: incidental and intentional. In...

Background Compulsivity is the hallmark of addiction progression and, as a construct, has played an important role in unveiling the etiological pathways from learning mechanisms underlying addictive behavior to harms resulting from it. However, a sound use of the compulsivity construct in the field of behavioral addictions has been hindered to date...

La reciente inclusión del trastorno por juego de azar (TJA) en el Manual Diagnóstico y Estadístico de Trastornos Mentales (American Psychiatric Association, 2013) ha supuesto un hito conceptual importante en la definición de los trastornos adictivos, porque por primera vez éste reconoce que un trastorno adictivo no requiere el consumo de una sustan...

Open science refers to a set of practices that aim to make scientific research more transparent, accessible, and reproducible, including pre-registration of study protocols, sharing of data and materials, the use of transparent research methods, and open access publishing. In this commentary, we describe and evaluate the current state of open scien...

Purpose of Review Here, we systematically review all available evidence on the triadic relationship between positive and negative urgency, craving, and severity of symptoms of candidate behavioral addictions. Recent Findings Current theoretical models attribute a central importance to craving in the chronification and prognosis of behavioral addic...

Even if for most people playing video games is a healthy leisure activity, a minority of vulnerable users present an excessive use associated to negative consequences (e.g., psychosocial maladjustment, sleep interference) and functional impairment. The current study first aims to identify psychological factors that contribute to discriminate highly...

The role of negative and positive urgency in the relationship between craving and symptoms of problematic video game use. Abstract Craving and emotion-driven impulsivity dimensions (positive and negative urgency) have been suggested as factors involved in the progression of different potentially problematic behaviors. However, their role in severit...

Background Compulsivity is the hallmark of addiction chronification and, as a construct, has played an important role in unveiling the etiological pathways from learning mechanisms underlying addictive behavior to harms resulting from it. However, a sound use of the compulsivity construct in the field of behavioral addictions has been hindered to d...

Open science refers to a set of practices that aim to make scientific research more transparent, accessible, and reproducible, including pre-registration of study protocols, sharing of data and materials, the use of transparent research methods, and open access publishing. In this opinion piece, we describe and evaluate the current state of open sc...

Background and aims Negative/positive urgency (NU/PU) refers to the proneness to act rashly under negative/positive emotions. These traits are proxies to generalized emotion dysregulation, and are well-established predictors of gambling-related problems. We aimed to replicate a previous work (Quintero et al., 2020) showing NU to be related to fault...

Literatura reciente reporta que la modalidad de juego de azar preferida o más frecuentemente practicada se relaciona con diversas medidas de bienestar psicológico y juego problemático (Mathieu et al., 2020). Siguiendo la clasificación propuesta por Navas et al. (2017), en este trabajo se pretende explorar las asociaciones existentes entre las prefe...

Gaming disorder was officially recognized as a disorder of addictive behaviour in the International Classification of Diseases 11th revision in 2019. Since then, other types of potentially problematic online behaviour have been discussed as possible candidates for inclusion in the psychiatric nosography of addictive disorders. Understanding these p...

The structural addictive characteristics of gambling products are important targets for prevention, but can be unintuitive to laypeople. In the PictoGRRed (Pictograms for Gambling Risk Reduction) study, we aimed to develop pictograms that illustrate the main addictive characteristics of gambling products and to assess their impact on identifying th...

The paper by Sassover and Weinstein (2022) contributes to a timely and complex debate related to the classification of Compulsive Sexual Behavior Disorder (CSBD). The recent inclusion of CSBD as an impulse control disorder in the ICD-11 has generated debate since a competitive view is that CSBD should rather be classified as an addictive disorder....

Experimental models identify the transition from choice to compulsivity as the main mechanism underlying addiction. In behavioral addictions research, however, the adjective compulsive is used to describe virtually any kind of excessive or dysregulated behavior, which hinders the connection between experimental and clinical models. In this systemat...

Introduction The objective of the present work is to investigate the prospective associations between physical fitness components (cardiorespiratory fitness, motor fitness, and muscular strength) and two domains of executive function, working memory, and inhibitory control, in adolescents. Methods A total of 422 Spanish adolescents (13.35 ± 1.54 y...

This commentary challenges some of the proposals made in the opinion paper entitled “The expanded interactional model of exercise addiction” by Dinardi, Egorov, and Szabo (2021). We first question the usefulness of the (expanded) interactional model of exercise addiction to determine the psychological processes underlying distress and functional im...

Co-occurrence of drug misuse with other dysregulated behaviors is common. This study was aimed at exploring the associations between the risk of presenting a clinically relevant condition involving non-substance-related addictive or dysregulated behaviors (as measured by the MultiCAGE CAD-4 screening), and cannabis abuse/dependence (CAST/SDS) score...

[This corrects the article DOI: 10.5334/joc.126.].

Background Distorted gambling-related cognitions are tightly related to gambling problems, and are one of the main targets of treatment for disordered gambling, but their etiology remains uncertain. Although folk wisdom and some theoretical approaches have linked them to lower domain-general reasoning abilities, evidence regarding that relationship...

Methamphetamine use disorder involves continued use of the drug despite negative consequences. Such ‘compulsivity’ can be measured by reversal learning tasks, which involve participants learning action‐outcome task contingencies (acquisition‐contingency) and then updating their behaviour when the contingencies change (reversal). Using these paradig...

Evidence about whether reflective thinking may be induced and whether it affects utilitarian choices is inconclusive. Research suggests that answering items correctly in the Cognitive Reflection Test (CRT) before responding to dilemmas may lead to more utilitarian decisions. However, it is unclear to what extent this effect is driven by the inhibit...

Background Decisions made by individuals with disordered gambling are markedly inflexible. However, whether anomalies in learning from feedback are gambling-specific, or extend beyond gambling contexts, remains an open question. More generally, addictive disorders—including gambling disorder—have been proposed to be facilitated by individual differ...

There is an ongoing debate in the scientific community regarding whether a state of mental fatigue may have a negative effect upon a range of objective and subjective measures of human performance. This issue has attracted attention from several fields, including sport and exercise sciences. In fact, a considerable body of literature in the sport s...

Endurance physical exercise is accompanied by subjective perceptions of exertion (reported perceived exertion, RPE), emotional valence, and arousal. These constructs have been hypothesized to serve as the basis for the exerciser to make decisions regarding when to stop, how to regulate pace, and whether or not to exercise again. In dual physical-co...

Background Negative urgency –the tendency to lose control under the influence of strong negative emotions– has been proposed to be a sign of malfunctioning emotion regulation mechanisms, and to contribute to severity and complications of gambling disorder and other externalizing behaviors. Aims and method: This study is aimed at (1) testing whether...

Background Behavioral flexibility –the ability to dynamically readjust our behavior in response to reward contingency changes– is often investigated using probabilistic reversal learning tasks (PRLT). Poor PRLT performance has been proposed as a proxy for compulsivity, and theorized to be related to perseverative gambling. Previous attempts to meas...

Emotion regulation (ER) is a strong predictor of different aspects of mental health and wellbeing. However, only recently has ER been examined in relation to physical activity and its effects on fitness. In the present study, 26 elite helicopter pilots, serving in the Spanish Air Force, were physically trained for 6 months, and their level of fitne...

Objective: to replicate the hypothesis that mental fatigue impairs physical performance. Design: a pre-registered (https://osf.io/wqkap/), randomized, within-subject experiment. Methods: 30 recreationally active adults completed a time-to-exhaustion test (TTE) at 80% VO2max in two separate sessions, after completing a mental fatigue task or watch...

Background: Difficulties in emotion regulation and craving regulation have been linked to eating symptomatology in patients with anorexia nervosa (AN), contributing to the maintenance of their eating disorder. Methods: To investigate clinical and electrophysiological correlates of these processes, 20 patients with AN and 20 healthy controls (HC)...

Objective: Impulsivity and difficulties in regulating emotions are considered to be transdiagnostic characteristics of patients with eating disorders (EDs). The study aimed to investigate trait impulsivity and inhibitory components of impulsivity, related or unrelated to emotions in patients with EDs. Method: A total of 17 patients with anorexia...

The aim of this review is to explore the psychobiological substrates of gambling-related cognitions, and their relationship with motivational and emotional processes, to contribute to the understanding of this important facet of disordered gambling. These cognitions promote gambling initiation and maintenance, and gambling games’ structural feature...

Learning psycho(bio)logy has developed a solid corpus of evidence and theory regarding behavior control modes. The present article briefly reviews that literature and its influence on recent models in which the transition from goal-directed to compulsive behavior is identified as the main process underlying substance use disorders. This literature...

College students are particularly vulnerable to risky alcohol use, which increases their likelihood of developing an alcohol use disorder in the future. As such, preventing and reducing alcohol use among college students should be a priority for health and social policies. This work was aimed to show that brief group-delivered MI is as effective as...

Gambling disorder (GD) is now recognized as a behavioral addiction. Evidence has shown that GD and substance use disorders (SUDs) have shared vulnerability factors, similar clinical characteristics, and neurobiological overlaps. However, these similarities have somewhat overshadowed the specificities that account for the differences between GD and...

While certain player vulnerabilities are known to increase risk of gaming disorder (GD), the topic of maladaptive player × game relationships in GD has received limited attention. This review aimed to: (1) identify game types associated with GD symptomatology; and (2) evaluate individual differences (e.g., age, personality, depression) in the relat...

Objective: to replicate the hypothesis that mental fatigue impairs physical performance. Design: a pre-registered (https://osf.io/wqkap/), randomized, within-subject experiment. Methods: 30 recreationally active adults completed a time-to-exhaustion test (TTE) at 80% VO2max in two separate sessions, after completing a mental fatigue task or watchin...

Background: Decisions made by disordered gamblers are markedly inflexible. However, whether anomalies in learning from feedback are gambling-specific, or extend beyond gambling contexts, remains an open question. More generally, addictive disorders –including gambling disorder– have been proposed to be facilitated by individual differences in learn...

This study investigates the predictive value of impulsivity traits (as measured by the UPPS-P impulsive behaviour scale) and relevant covariates (sociodemographics, gambling severity, dysphoric mood, other potentially addictive behaviours, and non-verbal intelligence) with regard to treatment dropout and level of adherence to therapy guidelines and...

This cross-sectional study was aimed at investigating the role of emotional regulation in regular gambling in a sample of 197 disordered and non-problem gamblers from Ecuador. Two proxies were used as measures of behavioral signs of generalized emotion dysregulation (UPPS-P emotion-driven impulsivity) and intentional emotion regulation strategies (...

Gambling disorder is a serious psychiatric condition characterized by decision-making and reward processing impairments that are associated with dysfunctional brain activity in the orbitofrontal cortex (OFC). However, it remains unclear whether OFC functional abnormalities in gambling disorder are accompanied by structural abnormalities. We address...

Background Gambling behavior presents substantial individual variability regarding its severity, manifestations, and psychological correlates. Specifically, differences in emotion regulation, impulsivity, and cognitive distortions have been identified as crucial to describe individual profiles with implications for the prevention, prognosis, and tr...

Both research and clinical practice acknowledge the importance of craving as a maintenance and relapse factor in gambling disorder. The elaborated intrusion theory (EIT; Kavanagh et al., 2005) of desire has been extensively investigated in relation to psychoactive substance or food cravings but, to date, has scarcely been studied in relation to gam...

The issue of whether a state of mental fatigue have a negative effect upon a range of cognitive and physical indices continues to be debated in the scientific community. This issue has attracted attention in several fields, including the science of sport and exercise. It has been proposed that performing a long cognitive task might deplete internal...

A substantial body of work has depicted a positive association between physical exercise and cognition, although the key factors driving that link are still a matter of scientific debate. Here, we aimed to contribute further to that topic by pooling the data from seven studies (N = 361) conducted by our research group to examine whether cardiovascu...

[This corrects the article DOI: 10.3389/fpsyt.2019.00173.].

Background: Gambling disorder (GD) is a heterogeneous disorder which has clinical manifestations that vary according to variables in each individual. Considering the importance of the application of specific therapeutic interventions, it is essential to obtain clinical classifications based on differentiated phenotypes for patients diagnosed with G...

Rationale and method Accurately identifying motives to gamble is crucial in the functional analysis of gambling behavior. In this study, a data-driven approach was followed to clarify the factor structure underlying a pool of motives for gambling, selected from the Gambling Motives Questionnaire–Financial (GMQ-F), and the Reasons for Gambling Quest...

Introduction: There is an outstanding need to identify predictors of driving under the influence of alcohol (DUI) among young adults, particularly women. Impulsivity, or the tendency to act without thinking, is a predictor of DUI, but the specific facets of impulsivity that predict DUI and their interaction with sex differences remain unclear. We...

Efecto combinado de la aptitud cardiovascular y el tipo de práctica deportiva en la relación entre ejercicio físico y atención sostenida

Accurately identifying motives is crucial in the functional analysis of gambling behavior. In this study, a data-driven approach was followed to clarify the factor structure underlying a pool of motives for gambling, selected from the Gambling Motives Questionnaire – Financial (GMQ-F), and the Reasons for Gambling Questionnaire (RGQ), in a sample o...

Gambling disorder is a serious psychiatric condition which is characterized by decision-making and reward processing impairments underlain by dysfunctional brain activity in the orbitofrontal cortex (OFC). However, it remains unclear whether OFC dysfunction in gambling disorder is associated with structural abnormalities. We addressed this question...

In the last years, a substantial body of work has depicted a positive association between regular practice of physical exercise and cognition. Despite the progress on this topic, the key factors driving that link are still a matter of scientific debate. Here, we aimed to further contribute to that body of work by pooling the data from seven studies...

Emotion-regulation processes have been attributed a key role in the emergence and progressive loss of control over addictive behaviors. Recently, Navas et al. (2018) have proposed the Gambling Space Model, in which distinct emotion regulation processes are attributed the central roles in generating individual differences among gambling disorder pat...

This cross-sectional survey study had the aim of clarifying the relationships between leisure time physical activity (LTPA) and non-drug-re-lated self-regulation problems (non-drug-related SRPs), including behavioral addictions, and the role of impulsive personality traits therein. Spanish university students (N = 329; Mage = 21.20) completed quest...

This study investigates the predictive value of impulsivity traits (as measured by the UPPS-P impulsive behaviour scale) and relevant covariates (sociodemographics, gambling severity, dysphoric mood, other potentially addictive behaviours, and non-verbal intelligence) with regard to treatment dropout and level of adherence to therapy guidelines and...

FREE ACCESS ONLINE: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/add.14388 Note: Consortium list in supplementary file. Dr. King conceived of the letter and wrote the first draft. Joel Billieux, Paul Delfabbro, Marc Potenza, John Saunders, and Dan Stein made substantial edits to multiple versions of the letter. Additional feedback from unnamed...

Putting money at stake produces anticipatory uncertainty, a process that has been linked to key features of gambling. Here we examined how learning and individual differences modulate the stimulus preceding negativity (SPN, an electroencephalographic signature of perceived uncertainty of valued outcomes) in gambling disorder patients (GDPs) and hea...

El trastorno por juego de apuestas (TJA) es reconocido hoy como una adicción conductual por sus similitudes con la adicción a sustancias. Sin embargo, existe una gran variabilidad dentro de las poblaciones de jugadores; un hecho que supone un desafío para comprender las bases psicobiológicas de este trastorno. Recientemente, se ha propuesto un mode...

We aimed to test the effects of mental (i.e., executive) load during a dual physical-mental task on ratings of perceived exertion (RPE), affective valence, and arousal. The protocol included two dual physical-mental tasks with matched physical demands but different executive demands (2-back and oddball), carried out on different days. The whole pro...

Reports of regional grey matter volume (GMV) anomalies in patients with gambling disorder (PGD) are inconsistent, which can be attributed to methodological disparity and inattention to individual variability. Voxel-based morphometry was used to compare GMV between 25 PGD and 25 healthy controls. Additionally, the study explored associations of inte...

En els últims anys la Psicologia està patint internament i externa una crisi important de credibilitat, a la qual tampoc han estat alienes altres ciències, com ara la Medicina o la Biologia. Diversos projectes de ciència de col·laboració suggereixen que una gran part dels resultats de la investigació són difícils de reproduir. Això ve acompanyat d’...

Introduction: Previous studies have shown links of body composition and fitness measures with brain structure, as well as with different aspects of emotional adjustment and well-being. However, the possible role of trait emotion-regulation success in the relationship between fitness/body composition and emotion-related subcortical structures have...

Purpose: The purposes of this study were to (a) investigate the effect of physical effort (cycling for 60 min at 60 ± 5% of individually computed reserve heart-rate capacity), combined with 2 different levels of cognitive demand (2-back, oddball), on intraocular pressure (IOP) and subjective judgments of perceived exertion (ratings of perceived ex...

Objectives To examine the associations of physical fitness (i.e. cardiorespiratory fitness, muscular strength, and speed/agility) with psychological distress and psychological well-being in overweight/obese pre-adolescent children. Design 110 overweight/obese children (10.0 ± 1.1 years old, 61 boys) from the ActiveBrains project (http://profith.ug...

OBJECTIVES: To examine the associations of physical fitness (i.e. cardiorespiratory fitness, muscular strength, and speed/agility) with psychological distress and psychological well-being in overweight/obese pre-adolescent children. DESIGN: 110 overweight/obese children (10.0±1.1years old, 61 boys) from the ActiveBrains project (http://profith.ugr...

Causal learning is the ability to progressively incorporate raw information about dependencies between events, or between one’s behavior and its outcomes, into beliefs of the causal structure of the world. In spite of the fact that some cognitive biases in gambling disorder can be described as alterations of causal learning involving gambling-relev...

Background: Impulsivity is understood to be a multidimensional construct involving aspects such as impulsive choice and impulsive traits. Delay discounting, the tendency to place greater value in immediate rewards over larger, long-term rewards, has been associated with maladaptive choices in gambling disorder (GD). Delay discounting is known to e...

Impulsivity (and related traits reward/punishment sensitivity and tolerance to delayed rewards) and gambling cognitions have been linked to gambling. However, their independent associations with gambling preferences and clinical status have never been dissociated. The current study applied a data-driven strategy to identify gambling preferences, ba...

The aim of the present study was to develop and validate a Spanish version of the short Domain-Specifi c Risk-Taking (DOSPERT- 30) scale, measuring risk-taking behavior, risk perception, and expected benefi cial consequences (from taking risks) in fi ve life domains: ethics, fi nance, health/security, recreational, and social decisions. Method: The...

El término efecto hot hand (‘fenómeno de estar en racha’) hace referencia a un hipotético aumento del rendimiento tras el encadenamiento de varios ensayos acertados. Se identifican tres tipos de investigaciones en contextos deportivos: (1) centradas en la (in)existencia de rachas, (2) en los mecanismos psicológicos de la creencia humana en las rac...

Background and aims Abnormal cognitions are among the most salient domain-specific features of gambling disorder. The aims of this study were: (a) to examine and validate a Spanish version of the Gambling-Related Cognitions Scale (GRCS; Raylu & Oei, 2004) and (b) to examine associations between cognitive distortion levels, impulsivity, and gambling...

Background and aims: Gambling disorder is characterized by poor regulation of negative emotions and impulsive behaviors. This study aimed to (1) compare gambling disorder patients (GDPs) and healthy controls (HCs) in self-report and brain activation measures of emotion regulation; and (2) establish its relationship with negative emotion-driven imp...

Validación de la versión española de la escala de toma de riesgos en dominios específicos (DOSPERT-30). Antecedentes: la escala de toma de riesgos en dominios específicos (DOSPERT-30) evalúa la propensión a comportamientos de riesgo, la percepción del riesgo y los benefi cios esperados en 5 dominios (ética, fi nanzas, salud/seguridad, recreativo y...

Correction of erroneous signs in Equation 2 from: Perales, J. C., Catena, A., Cándido, A., & Maldonado, A. (2017). Rules of Causal Judgment: Mapping Statistical Information onto Causal Beliefs. In M. Waldmann (Ed.). The Oxford Handbook of Causal Reasoning. (pp. 29-51). Oxford University Press. [Available at https://goo.gl/R2rQ4b].

The hot hand phenomenom (also known as hot hat effect or streaks) refers to a hypothetical performance increase after chaining several trials successfully. Three types of research are identified in sports contexts: (1) focused on the (in) existence of streaks, (2) on the psychological mechanisms of human belief in streaks and (3) on possible behavi...

Correction of erroneous signs in Equation 2 from: Perales, J. C., Catena, A., Cándido, A., & Maldonado, A. (2017). Rules of Causal Judgment: Mapping Statistical Information onto Causal Beliefs. In M. Waldmann (Ed.). The Oxford Handbook of Causal Reasoning. (pp. 29-51). Oxford University Press. [Available at https://goo.gl/R2rQ4b].

Background and Study Aim: The relationship between mental toughness (MT) and perfectionism has not been established to date. The main aim of this study is: knowledge about MT, perfectionistic strivings, and perfectionistic concerns of judo athletes by achievement level and age; relationship between MT and perfectionism dimensions. Material and Met...

Background and aims Gray’s Reinforcement Sensitivity Theory has been widely applied to different clinical populations, but few studies have reported empirical evidence based on this theory for treatment outcomes in patients with gambling disorder (GD) and compulsive buying (CB). The aims of this study were to explore the association between clinica...

We take the first steps towards a shot selection quality model in basketball that incorporates decisional cues that might be predictive, not only of proximal results (e.g., scoring), but also of distal results (e.g., winning/losing the match). 2976 jump-shots from 50 Euroleague matches were sampled, following systematic observation guidelines. The...

Previous research suggests that social comparisons affect decision making under uncertainty. However, the role of the length of the social interaction for this relationship remains unknown. This experiment tests the effect of social comparisons on financial risk taking and how this effect is modulated by whether social encounters are sporadic or re...