Moving out of the laboratory: does nicotine improve everyday attention?
Open accessAbstract
The most robust demonstrations of the nicotine-related performance effects on human cognitive processes are seen in tasks that measure attention. If nicotine does have some potential for enhancing attention, the obvious question to ask is whether the effects demonstrated in the laboratory hold any significance for real-life performance. This paper describes three studies that compare the effects in smokers of a single own brand cigarette on laboratory tests of attention and on everyday analogues of these laboratory tasks. In the laboratory measures of sustained attention and in the everyday analogue, performance advantages were registered in the smoking condition. These benefits were observed in smokers who abstained for a self-determined period of not less than 2 h. The studies were unable to replicate previous research reporting positive effects of smoking on a laboratory task of selective attention, the Stroop task. Small but significant improvements in performance were registered in the everyday analogues, which involved sustaining attention in a dual task situation, a telephone directory search task and a map search task. In addition, smokers showed a significant colour-naming decrement for smoking-related stimuli in the Stroop task. This attentional bias towards smoking-related words occurred independent of whether they had abstained or recently smoked an own brand cigarette. The effect is discussed in terms of the two-component model of processing bias for emotionally valenced stimuli.
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Demonstration of large and clinically useful effects of nicotine has been difficult.
“However, the demonstration of large and clinically useful effects of nicotine has been difficult (for review see Rusted et al, 2000; Newhouse et al, 2001, 2004; Sarter et al, 2009b; Sarter, 2010).”
From Modes and models of forebrain cholinergic neuromodulation of cognition (2011) · cites this paper as Rusted et al, 2000
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- Authors
- Rusted, J. M., Caulfield, D., King, L., & Goode, A.
- Affiliations
- University of Sussex (GB)
- Corresponding author
- Rusted, J.M.
- ORCID
- Rusted, J.M.
- Venue
- Behavioral Pharmacology
- Published
- 2000-11
- Volume
- 11
- Issue
- 7
- Pages
- 621-629
- ISSN
- 0955-8810 (ISSN-L)
- OpenAlex
- W2090740083
- Cited by
- 51
- References
- 38
- Citations by year
- 2025: 1 · 2023: 1 · 2020: 1 · 2019: 1 · 2016: 2 · 2014: 2 · 2013: 2 · 2012: 3
- FWCI
- 1.22
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- green
- figshare.com
- Licence
- cc-by
- Locations
- Behavioural Pharmacology (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- Figshare (submittedVersion, cc-by)
- Topics
- Health Sciences › Medicine › Physiology › Smoking Behavior and Cessation
- Life Sciences › Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology › Molecular Biology › Nicotinic Acetylcholine Receptors Study
- Health Sciences › Medicine › Pediatrics, Perinatology and Child Health › Prenatal Substance Exposure Effects
- Keywords
- nicotine, smoking, attention, sustained attention, selective attention, Stroop task, attentional bias, color naming, dual-task performance, everyday performance, emotional valence, processing bias
- MeSH terms
- Adolescent, Adult, Analysis of Variance, Attention, Female, Ganglionic Stimulants, Humans, Male, Middle Aged, Nicotine, Psychomotor Performance, Smoking
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