The Immediate Effects of Sports Gambling, Surprise, and Suspense on Attention and Memory

Poster Session F - Tuesday, March 10, 2026, 8:00 – 10:00 am PDT, Fairview/Kitsilano Ballrooms

Andrew Loehr¹ (andrewthomasloehr@gmail.com), James Antony¹, Colin Schmitt¹, Amrit Pradhan¹; ¹California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo

The recent expansion of legalized sports gambling in the United States has increased the number of individuals who place bets while watching sports. Existing research has primarily focused on the chronic effects of gambling, leaving a gap in understanding how sports betting impacts real-time suspense, surprise, attention, and memory. The present study examined these processes during naturalistic basketball viewing. Participants (n = 24) watched the final five minutes of nine basketball games while wearing a 32-channel EEG cap. During viewing, participants placed live bets on selected possessions to earn small monetary rewards. Suspense was modeled as the variability in win probability on the upcoming possession based on historical data. After viewing, participants completed a surprise free-recall memory test. A General Linear Model assessed relationships between EEG spectral power [theta (4-7 Hz), alpha (7-14 Hz), beta (14-30 Hz)], suspense, bet status, game time, and recording time. Contrary to hypothesized results, higher suspense was associated with decreases in broadband (4-30 Hz), theta, alpha, and beta power. Bet status was not significantly related to EEG power. Time course analysis revealed decreased broadband power leading up to possession changes and increased power immediately afterward, consistent with event boundary offset responses in other neuroimaging paradigms. In the future, we will determine whether memory for basketball possessions correlates with suspense, betting status, or EEG measures defined above. These findings suggest a more complex relationship between suspense and neural indicators of attention than predicted and provide insight into the real-time neural effects of betting during sports viewing.

Topic Area: ATTENTION: Other