Nicotine decreases attentional bias to negative-affect-related Stroop words among smokers

Abstract

The present study examined the hypothesis that nicotine is associated with reduced attentional bias to affective and smoking-related stimuli in a modified Stroop task. A total of 56 habitual smokers were each tested on 4 days with 14 mg nicotine patches and placebo patches, counterbalanced, as a within-subjects factor in a double-blind design. A modified Stroop using negative-affect words, smoking words, color words, and neutral words was presented via computer in blocked format. As predicted, nicotine, relative to placebo, was associated with decreased attentional bias to negative words. Nicotine speeded performance during smoking-word and color-word blocks to the same degree as during neutral words and thus appeared to also have a nonspecific performance-enhancing effect. In an exploratory analysis, nicotine-attention effects occurred only in the initial presentation of pairs of blocked word pages. Nicotine also was associated with improved mood. The results are discussed in terms of affect-attention and smoking literatures.

Differences in “bottom-up” and “top-down” neural activity in current and former cigarette smokers: Evidence for neural substrates which may promote nicotine abstinence through increased cognitive control

“…that current smokers would demonstrate an attentional bias through slower reactions times in the presence of drug-related cues. While smokers have been shown to demonstrate state-dependent (abstinence vs. satiety) alterations in arousal (Parrott and Kaye, 1999), motivation (Powell et al, 2002) and sustained attention (Rusted et al, 2000), which might bestow an acute beneficial effect of nicotine on task performance, it may be that this lack of behavioural effect represents the small sample size used in Experiment 1, compared to previous studies (Domier et al, 2007;Munafo et al, 2003;Rzetelny et al, 2008). Experiment 2 investigated neural activity during motor response inhibition and error monitoring in the same sample using a go/no-go task.…”

Smoking abstinence and depressive symptoms modulate the executive control system during emotional information processing

“…Consistent with this model, nicotine withdrawal potentiates the startle response (Cinciripini et al , 2006) and amplifies electrocortical responses (Gilbert et al , 2004) to negative emotional stimuli, and reduces the hedonic rating of positive stimuli (Dawkins et al , 2007). Moreover, data from a small number of studies suggest nicotine withdrawal results in greater interference from emotional stimuli during task-relevant processes (Drobes et al , 2006; Gilbert et al , 2008; Gilbert et al , 2007; Powell et al , 2002; Rzetelny et al , 2008). Despite these findings, the neural mechanisms underlying the interaction between smoking abstinence and emotion–cognition remain poorly characterized.…”

Attentional bias to negative affect moderates negative affect’s relationship with smoking abstinence.

“…Previous studies indicate that smokers exhibit an attentional bias to smoking and negative affect stimuli (Drobes et al, 2006), smoking abstinence increases attentional bias towards negative affect stimuli (Rzetelny et al, 2008), and attentional bias to smoking cues predicts abstinence during a cessation attempt (Waters, Shiffman et al, 2003). However, speeded initial orienting to stimuli (IO) and the inability to disengage from stimuli (ITD) have been identified as distinct components of attentional bias (Field, Munafo, & Franken, 2009), and these previous studies did not distinguish between the IO and ITD.…”