Aims-This research examined the performance of a broad range of measures posited to relate to smoking craving.Design-Heavy smokers and tobacco chippers, who were either deprived of smoking or not for 7 hours, were exposed to both smoking (a lit cigarette) and control cues.Participants-Smokers not currently interested in trying to quit smoking (n = 127) were recruited. Heavy smokers (n = 67) averaged smoking at least 21 cigarettes/day and tobacco chippers (n = 60) averaged 1-5 cigarettes on at least 2 days/week.Measurements-Measures included urge rating scales and magnitude estimations, a rating of affective valence, a behavioral choice task that assessed perceived reinforcement value of smoking, several smoking-related judgement tasks and a measure of cognitive resource allocation.Findings-Results indicated that both deprivation state and smoker type tended to affect responses across these measurement domains.Conclusions-Findings support the use of several novel measures of craving-related processes in smokers.

Although persons addicted to drugs reliably report experiencing cravings or urges during drug cue exposure, less is known about factors that may moderate this effect. This article reviews cue exposure studies with people who smoke, are dependent on alcohol, or are addicted to cocaine or opiates. Perceived drug use opportunity is found to affect urge ratings. Specifically, people who are addicted to substances and who perceive an opportunity to consume their drug of choice report higher urges than do those who do not anticipate being able to use the drug. This factor was proposed to explain why those in treatment for substance dependence report urges that are about half the strength of those in nontreatment settings. The impact of perceived drug use opportunity on urge is considered from a variety of perspectives, including conditioning theories, a cognitive appraisal framework, and motivated reasoning theory. Conceptual and methodological implications of perceived drug use opportunity are addressed.

The authors examined the effects of alcohol consumption on cigarette craving in heavy smokers and tobacco chippers (n = 138) who were instructed not to smoke for 12 hr. Participants were exposed to both smoking cues (a lit cigarette) and control cues. Half received a moderate dose of alcohol, adjusted for gender, and half received a placebo. Results indicated that alcohol consumption produced an increase in urge-to-smoke ratings before smoking cue exposure. Moreover, during cue exposure, alcohol consumption produced a sharper increase in urge ratings than did the placebo. In addition, during smoking cue exposure, alcohol increased the likelihood of displaying facial expressions associated with positive affect. These findings suggest that alcohol consumption influences both the magnitude and the emotional valence of cigarette cravings.

No abstract

The emotional Stroop task was used to examine the influence of opportunity to smoke on attentional bias to smoking-related stimuli. At the outset of the study, 92 nicotine-deprived smokers were told that they (a) would, (b) would not, or (c) might be able to smoke during the experiment. Next, participants completed an emotional Stroop task, in which they were presented with smoking-related or -unrelated words in an unblocked format. Smokers demonstrated interference to the smoking words, relative to matched neutral words, F(1, 87) = 18.0, p < .0001. Moreover, smoking opportunity affected the degree of interference, F(2, 87) = 4.35, p < .02, with participants who had been told they would be able to smoke during the study showing the most interference. The results suggest that smoking opportunity affects the salience of smoking-related stimuli among nicotine-deprived smokers.