Ismael Muela’s scientific contributions

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 experimentally induced here through an audio-guided protocol. We aim to involve 70 intensive gamblers and 70 intensive video gamers, all showing signs of risky gambling/gaming below the clinical cutoff. State compulsivity and craving levels are evaluated pre- and post-induction. Baseline assessments include emotional impulsivity (urgency scales), emotion regulation strategies (ERQ), severity measures, behavioral patterns, and sociodemographic data. Postinduction, participants' declarative reasons for craving increase, if any, are also recorded. Expected Results: Building on previous research, we propose the following hypotheses: (a) Measures of craving and state compulsivity will largely overlap with each other. (b) Gamblers will experience stronger induced craving and state compulsivity than video gamers. (c) Induction sensitivity will be higher among participants with higher emotional impulsivity, regardless of group. (d) Intentional emotion regulation strategies are not expected to have a significant impact on craving induction sensitivity. Additionally, (e) the hypotheses regarding the reasons behind the increase in craving remain open. Conclusions: Confirming these hypotheses would underscore craving's role in compulsive behaviors and clarify the distinct impacts of incidental and intentional emotion regulation on craving management. Furthermore, the study aims to differentiate the roles of state compulsivity and craving in problematic behaviors across the gaming and gambling domains.

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. Incidental emotion regulation takes place before there is awareness of the craving state, whereas intentional emotion regulation does so afterwards. So far, in the studies conducted by our research team, craving has been assessed by asking the person to recall moments of intense craving in the past. In the experiment presented here, a state of craving will be experimentally induced by using an audio-guided procedure. For this purpose, 70 gamblers and 70 video game players, in a subclinical severity range, will be recruited to be administered the craving-inducing protocol (based on Cornil et al., 2019). Our aim here is to describe a pre-registered method to replicate our findings in cross-sectional studies, regarding the role of craving in incidental and intentional emotion regulation mechanisms (using as proxies urgency and cognitive emotion regulation strategies scales, respectively), and to present preliminary evidence, if available.

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 preferencias de jugadores de juegos de azar, medidas en función de la frecuencia de juego observada, y diversas escalas de severidad, motivos para jugar, impulsividad, calidad de vida y compulsividad. Un total de 303 personas fueron reclutadas mediante un panel online. Para poder participar, la persona debía haber jugado al menos una vez en el último año a un juego de azar con dinero. Se realizó un análisis de redes consistente en examinar e interpretar las relaciones de asociación entre las variables a estudio mediante una representación gráfica donde los nodos son las variables y los enlaces entre ellos configuran las relaciones existentes. Los resultados muestras patrones de asociación diferencial para el grado de participación en distintas modalidades de juego. Por un lado, la frecuencia de participación en juegos tipo I (cartas, juegos de casino y apuestas donde hay componente de habilidad) se asocia a motivos instrumentales hedónicos y una relativa menor severidad. Por otro lado, la frecuencia de participación en juegos tipo II (tragaperras, bingo, rascas, donde pesa más el factor suerte) se relaciona en mayor medida con la severidad, la compulsividad y, de forma indirecta, con otras medidas que reflejan carencias en la regulación emocional.