Attentional bias toward cigarette cues in active smokers

Abstract

Rationale: While it is well documented that substance users exhibit attentional bias toward addiction-related stimuli, the exact mechanism remains unclear.

Objectives: To differentiate between distinct aspects of attentional allocation in the smoking-cue attentional bias observed in smokers.

Methods: Active smokers (AS) and non-smoking controls completed spatial cueing tasks with pairs of smoking and neutral pictorial cues to measure attentional capture, and an attentional blink task with either a smoking or neutral image appearing behind the first target (T1) to measure aspects of attention separate from capture. In addition, we tested groups of sports enthusiasts, and non-enthusiasts in corresponding tasks replacing smoking images with sports-related images to address the possibility that effects found in the smoking study were due simply to greater stimulus familiarity.

Results: Smoking cues reflexively capture smokers' attention, as AS showed a greater bias toward smoking cues in short stimulus-onset asynchrony (SOA; the time between the onset of two stimuli) trials, but not in trials with a longer SOA. These effects represent a facilitation of responding to smoking- versus neutral-cued targets, and were absent in the sports control task. The attentional blink effects were similar in the smoking- and sports-cue experiments: the special T1 resulted in better detection of the second target for the smokers and sports enthusiasts.

Conclusions: Stimulus familiarity may contribute to some aspects of attentional bias in regular nicotine users, but selective quick capture of attention by smoking cues may be nicotine-habit specific.

Figures

Fig. 1

Schematic depictions of experimental trials in experiment 1. For experiment 2, smoking images were replaced by sports-related images. a One spatial cueing trial. A smoking and neutral cue pair appears for either 150 or 500 ms, followed by an ISI of 50 ms, and then a checkerboard target for 200 ms. The time between trials varied randomly between 1, 2, and 3 s. In this trial, the target appears in the location of the smoking cue. The bar within the checkerboard appears red in each trial. b One attentional blink trial. T1 occurred in position 4, 5, 6, 7, or 8, and T2 occurred at a lag of 1, 2, 3, 4, or 5 stimuli after T1. The figure depicts a trial in which T1 occurred as the 4th stimulus in the sequence. Numbers and letters in the middle of each image appeared in blue

Fig. 2

Reaction time bias measures from the spatial cueing paradigm. a Experiment 1. Non-smokers (NS) showed a small bias toward smoking cues for both stimulus onset asynchronies (SOAs), while smokers (AS) showed a stronger bias to smoking cues in the 200-ms SOA condition, and a small bias in the 550-ms SOA condition. A mixed model repeated measures ANOVA demonstrated a significant SOA × subject group interaction (F(1,44) =6.08, p=0.018). b Experiment 2. Familiarity with sports-related images had no effect on target reaction times in either sports enthusiasts (SE) or non-enthusiasts (NE). A mixed model repeated measures ANOVA found no significant main effects or interactions

Fig. 3

T2|T1 accuracy bias measures from the attentional blink paradigms. a Experiment 1. Non-smokers (NS) showed a slight bias toward extended attentional processing of T1's superimposed on smoking-related images, while smokers (AS) showed the opposite result. b Experiment 2. Non-enthusiasts (NE) showed a slight bias toward extended attentional processing of T1's with sports-related images in the background, while sports enthusiasts (SE) showed the opposite result, showing a pattern of responding very similar to that of smokers in Experiment 1 (a)