Sex Differences in Time Perception During Smoking Abstinence

Abstract

Introduction: Nicotine withdrawal leads to impulsive decision-making, which reflects a preference for smaller, immediate rewards and often prompts a relapse to smoking. The mechanism by which nicotine withdrawal leads to impulsive decision-making is not well known. An essential dimension of decision-making is time perception. Impulsive decisions reflect intolerance of temporal delays and the perception that time is passing more slowly. Sex may be an important factor in impulsive decision-making and time perception, but no studies have investigated whether sex moderates the effects of nicotine withdrawal on impulsive decision-making and time perception. Methods: Thirty-three (12 female) adult smokers completed 2 laboratory sessions: following 24-hr abstinence and once smoking-as-usual (order counterbalanced, abstinence biochemically verified). Participants completed 2 time perception tasks, a decision-making task, and self-report measures of craving, withdrawal, and mood. Results: During time reproduction, males overestimated time during abstinence compared to smoking, whereas there was no session effect for females. On the time discrimination task, smokers were less accurate during abstinence, and this effect tended to be stronger among females. In general, males had higher discounting rates compared with females, but there was no effect of abstinence. Conclusions: The current data suggest that the effect of abstinence on time perception may be stronger in males and that males generally exhibit steeper delay discounting rates. Time perception may be an important mechanism in smoking abstinence. Our future work will investigate the role of time perception in smoking relapse and whether this is moderated by sex.

Withdrawal-Related Changes in Delay Discounting Predict Short-Term Smoking Abstinence

“…The significant abstinence effects on the TRT were in the predicted direction and are consistent with our previous study. 21 Moreover, this finding corresponded to a medium-sized effect (d = 0.43), similar to a previous study of time perception during abstinence. 40 The fact that abstinence significantly affected time reproduction, but had no effect on discounting, combined with the result that withdrawal-related changes in delay discounting, but not time reproduction or time discrimination, was predictive of shortterm cessation indicates that time perception and decision making may not be related psychological processes.…”

“…37,38 Convergent evidence suggests that time perception may also account for the association between nicotine withdrawal and impulsive decision making. Preliminary evidence from our lab 21 and other labs 39,40 suggests that, during acute abstinence, smokers overestimate time. However, no study that we know of has examined whether changes in time perception were related to the ability to quit smoking.…”

“…17,18 Acute withdrawal from nicotine increases delay discounting rates in some studies, 19,20 but not in others. 21,22 Importantly, greater discounting of delayed rewards predicts smoking relapse. [23][24][25][26] Indeed, recent evidence suggests that delay discounting is independently associated with relapse, above and beyond the role of nicotine dependence and stress in predicting relapse.…”

Behavioural tasks sensitive to acute abstinence and predictive of smoking cessation success: a systematic review and meta‐analysis

“…Twenty‐three studies reported baseline exhaled CO levels, which had a weighted average of 25.1 parts per million (p.p.m.). The following tasks were reported by three or more studies, and therefore meta‐analysed: delay discounting , response inhibition , mental arithmetic , recognition memory , Stroop , smoking Stroop and dot probe tasks . As the number of studies in each analysis was relatively small ( k = 3–6), we did not explore study‐level moderators.…”

Preliminary evidence for altered interoceptive processing in smokers

“…3.4 Time estimation task (Shah et al, 2016). Performance on the heartbeat tracking task might be confounded by one's ability to judge the duration of time intervals, and some evidence suggests that smokers may have poorer time estimation abilities than non-smokers, particularly during periods of abstinence (Ashare & Kable, 2015;Klein, Corwin & Stine, 2002;Sayette, Loewenstein, Kirchner & Travis, 2005). We controlled for this by asking half of the participants (randomly selected) in both conditions (n = 50) to complete a time estimation task.…”