Attentional disengagement, craving, and mentalizing: a preliminary experimental study among older-aged male gamblers.

The present study provides the first empirical support for the role of attentional bias, craving, and mentalizing among older-aged gambling. More specifically, a difficult in disengaging attention away from gambling, the anticipation of pleasure deriving from gambling, and hypomentalizing predicted gambling severity among older-aged gamblers. The findings make an important contribution, by identifying the factors responsible for problem gambling among this specific age cohort and suggesting that timely interventions for mentalizing and attentional bias may be necessary to prevent problem gambling in old age.