Citation

Baxter BW, Hinson RE. J. Abnorm. Psychol. 2001; 110(1): 59-66.

Affiliation

Department of Psychology, University of Western Ontario, London, Ontario, Canada.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2001, American Psychological Association)

DOI

unavailable

PMID

11261400

Abstract

The role of attention in the production of smoking behavior was investigated. Experienced and novice smokers were asked to perform a reaction time (RT) task under 4 conditions: while smoking (smoking), while mimicking all aspects of smoking except inhaling (pseudosmoking), while simply holding a cigarette (holding), and while not smoking (baseline). Experienced smokers' RTs increased during the pseudosmoking and holding conditions compared with baseline but did not differ between the smoking and baseline conditions, suggesting that attentional resources were not required for typical smoking behavior but were required to alter or inhibit smoking behavior. Novice smokers' RTs were slower during both the smoking and pseudosmoking conditions but not the holding condition, suggesting that novice smokers require the use of resources to smoke. Experiment 2 demonstrated that the differences in RT across conditions could not be explained by differences in urges.

Language: en