Visuospatial attention in smokers relative to non-smokers: a pilot study

INST: L_135Tobacco use is considered to one of the biggest health threats that the world has faced and has a huge impact on the health issues and economic costs for the individual and society. One explanation of the high prevalence could be nicotine, which is found in tobacco. Nicotine is an addictive stimulant. To find effective smoking cessation programs, it is necessary to gain more knowledge about the mechanisms in the addictive behaviour. Research suggest that the visuospatial attention could be affected in smokers, but the exact role of reward in this context needs to be further elucidated. This study aims to address this issue. A visuospatial cueing task and reaction time was used to investigate bias and disengagement in relation to anticipated reward. We had three conditions; neutral, money and cigarette stimuli. The experiment was an online survey. In total we had 21 participants (age: 25.38, SD: 7.17), 14 females (age: 24.93, S.D.: 7.37) and 7 males (Age: 26.29, S.D.: 7.22). 4 of the participants were smokers (age: 21.75, SD: 2.87) and 17 participants were non-smokers (age: 26.24, SD: 7.66). The non-smokers relative to smokers showed a relative increase in bias in both conditions in relation to the neutral condition. The non-smokers showed similar increase of disengagement in both conditions in relation to the neutral condition. The group x condition interaction was not significant for either bias or disengagement