In commercial and digital settings, sound is deliberately crafted to evoke pleasure, urgency, or reward. Casino slot machines, for example, employ a palette of bright, celebratory tones, engineered to create excitement and elevate immersion even when the player experiences net losses, offering one of the most intensively engineered examples of sonic desire.
Research by Dixon et al. (2010, 2014) shows that celebratory win sounds, even during net losses, amplify arousal and distort reward perception, contributing to the immersive state gamblers describe as “the zone” (Schüll, 2012). The slots’ celebratory jingles, harmonic arpeggios and cascading tones are built to exploit reward-prediction circuitry, producing micro-rewards even in the absence of true financial gain. As we will further explore, neuroscience research shows that these cues amplify dopaminergic firing, especially when paired with visually salient animations or near-miss outcomes.
The ability to respond appropriately to unexpected events is crucial for survival because such events can signal potential rewards or threats. In
a recent paper published in 2024 in the Nature Communications journal, researchers at Yale University Gloria W. Feng & Robb B. Rutledge tested whether unexpected, task-irrelevant sounds could influence decision-making, using a large sample (about 1,600 participants across seven experiments). “Many of us might have the intuition that hearing an unexpected sound would be distracting, that it might lead to errors or a loss of focus,” said Rutledge, an assistant professor of psychology in Yale’s Faculty of Arts and Sciences and senior author of the study. “But when we think about the neurobiology, we know that dopamine plays a role in decision-making and a surprising sound leads to a short burst of dopamine.” That’s because the sound may indicate something important, said Rutledge, like something rewarding. When we make a decision, short dopamine bursts may be involved, in part, because the brain is weighing how rewarding the options are.
Before choosing between a “safe” and a “risky” option in a decision task, participants heard a short sequence of tones. In some trials the final tone was “rare” (unexpected), in others it was “common.” The core question was: would those “rare / surprising” sounds, though unrelated to the decision, change participants’ likelihood to take risk? On average, participants were about 4% more likely to choose the risky option after hearing a surprising (rare) tone compared to a common tone. The same rare-tone events also increased the likelihood that participants would switch away from their previous choice; that is, they were less likely to perseverate (repeat the same choice) after a surprising sound.
These behavioural effects did not appear to be due to simple “noise” or distraction: computational modelling indicated the effects could be best explained by a value-independent risky bias (increased propensity for risk) and a decision bias affecting choice repetition, both parameters previously linked to activity of the neurotransmitter Dopamine. When tone sequences were balanced (rare and common equally likely) or fully predictable, the “surprise”-driven effects disappeared, supporting the conclusion that unexpectedness of the sound (not mere presence of a sound) drives the effect.
The study provides compelling behavioural evidence that unexpected auditory events can shape risk-taking behaviour, and it presents a plausible dopaminergic interpretation supported by existing literature. Nevertheless, without direct neurobiological measurements, the causal role of dopamine remains inferential. The modest effect size and laboratory specificity invite caution in generalizing to real-world decision-making. Even so, the research highlights an underexplored but potentially important phenomenon: the subtle ways in which everyday sensory experiences may unconsciously influence judgment, risk preference, and behavioural flexibility.
Another recent study (2025) titled
Effects of Audiovisual Cues on Game Immersion during Simulated Slot Machine Gambling and published in the
Journal of Gambling Studies, examined whether audio-visual cues, typical of modern slot machines, influence the subjective experience of immersion during gambling. According to the authors (Fiza Arshad, Mario A. Ferrari, W. Spencer Murch, Mariya V. Cherkasova, Eve H. Limbrick‑Oldfield, Catharine A. Winstanley and Luke Clark), design features of slot machines “may influence these experiences, potentially interacting with personal risk factors for disordered gambling.”
To test this, 156 undergraduate students played a realistic slot-machine simulation inside an authentic cabinet. The researchers manipulated the intensity of audio-visual feedback (three conditions: Minus, Intermediate, Plus) and afterward used a validated “game immersion questionnaire” to measure how absorbed participants felt.
The Intermediate audio-visual cue condition led to significantly greater reported immersion than the Minus condition (p < 0.05). As the authors note: participants in the Minus condition “reported 12.3% lower immersion scores than those in the Intermediate condition.” Surprisingly, the Plus condition (maximal audio-visual intensity) did not produce the highest immersion; in exploratory models, some individuals reported lower immersion under Plus. Personal factors mattered: higher scores on the Problem Gambling Severity Index (PGSI) predicted greater immersion across all conditions (p < 0.001). A gender × Cue interaction was observed: among women, immersion was significantly higher in the Intermediate condition compared to Minus or Plus; this pattern was not observed for men.
This study supports the idea that game design, specifically audio-visual feedback, plays a crucial role in shaping gamblers’ subjective experience of immersion, which is often associated with problematic gambling behaviour. The fact that immersion was highest with intermediate, not maximal, levels of sensory stimulation suggest a non-linear relationship: too little stimulation under-engages the gambler; too much may reduce the perceived immersion or overwhelm the experience, possibly because of sensory overload or cue saturation.
Moreover, the influence of personal risk factors (high PGSI, psychological distress) indicates that some individuals are more susceptible than others to immersive effects. This underscores the interaction between “product” (slot machine design) and “person” (vulnerability factors), a theme often highlighted in gambling-harm research. In regulatory and public-health terms, the findings imply that audio-visual features should be considered not as mere decoration, but as core structural design elements that can enhance immersion and potentially contribute to gambling harm.
Early empirical work focused less on “immersion” per se and more on arousal and reinforcement produced by slot-machine sights and sounds. Dixon and colleagues
showed that “losses disguised as wins” (LDWs) – outcomes where you win less than you wager – still trigger strong physiological arousal when accompanied by celebratory graphics and sounds. These LDWs have been described as net-loss outcomes
“disguised by flashing graphics and high-fidelity winning sounds”, and are thought to inflate the perceived win rate.
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recent theory work by Murch & Clark (2021) explicitly conceptualized immersion in EGMs, describing the “slot machine zone” as a “trance-like state of diminished attention to time passing and gambling-irrelevant events”. They proposed the Gambling Immersion model, where structural features (like audio-visual cues, bet structure, speed of play) interact with individual vulnerabilities (e.g., impulsivity, gambling problems) to produce deeply immersive states.
Together, this body of research shows that immersion arises from the interplay of engineered design elements and player vulnerabilities. Audio-visual cues are not merely cosmetic; they meaningfully shape players’ perceptual and emotional states, influencing engagement and potentially contributing to gambling-related harm. The emerging consensus suggests that immersion is maximized not by overwhelming sensory stimulation but by carefully calibrated cue intensities, which may optimize attentional focus and reward processing. As such, contemporary regulatory and harm-minimization efforts increasingly view audio-visual design as a key structural feature warranting oversight.
![La Roulette in the Casino, from Monte-Carlo, 2nd Serie (ca. 1910) by Georges Goursat [Sem] (1863-1934). Source: metmuseum.org](https://theatticmag.com/img/a/features/section/thegambler_dostoievski.jpg)
