Childhood Use of Coin Pusher and Crane Grab Machines, and Adult Gambling: Robustness to Subjective Confidence in a Young Adult USA Sample

Abstract

Gambling as a youth is a risk factor for experiencing gambling-related harm as an adult. Most youth gambling research focuses on illegal engagement with age-restricted products, but youth can also gamble legally, by for example betting with friends, or via coin pusher and crane grab machines. Research has associated recollected rates of usage of these machines as a child with adult gambling participation and problems, but only in the UK and Australia, and has not tested for robustness to subjective confidence. The present study conceptually replicated these prior studies by investigating the association between recollected childhood use of coin push and crane grab machines, and adult gambling behavior, in a young adult USA sample. Participants rated their subjective confidence to test if individual differences in recollection biases provided a better account for any observed associations. Results found high recollected engagement rates for both coin pusher (87.2%) and crane grab machines (97.0%), and 5 of the 6 tested associations between youth machine usage and adult gambling engagement and problems were significant and in the hypothesized direction. Rates of subjective confidence were on average high (83.3 and 89.2 on a 0 to 100 scale), and generally did not interact with participants’ recollected rates of machine use. These findings extend prior research on potential public health concerns around children’s legal engagement with coin pusher and crane grab machines to a new country, the USA.

Associations between recollected rates of Category D fruit machine use as a child and adult gambling in a young adult sample

“…Participants were asked, “How often do you recall using category D fruit machines while being under the age of 18?”, and responded on a five-point scale of: never, seldom, occasionally, frequently, very frequently 22 . Immediately after, participants provided their level of subjective confidence (“How confident are you in your recollection of this?”) on a scale from 0 (“not at all confident”) to 100 (“very confident”), as first done by another recent study 23 .…”

“…First, the measured associations of H1–H4 below were done in a young adult sample aged 19–23 22 . Second, participants provided a measure of subjective confidence of their recollected childhood use of Category D fruit machines 23 , and interaction models were run to see if differential rates of subjective confidence across the sample could explain any observed positive associations (H5).…”