The effects of nicotine dose expectancy and motivationally relevant distracters on vigilance.

Abstract

The imminence of drug use (i.e., drug availability) has been found to be related to intensity of drug craving, but its effects on attentional bias to drug cues are unclear. This study investigated the effects of nicotine availability on attentional bias to smoking, affective, and neutral cues in a sample of adult smokers during a vigilance task. At the beginning of each of four laboratory sessions, overnight nicotine-deprived smokers (n = 51) were instructed that they would smoke a cigarette containing either nicotine (Told-NIC) or no nicotine (Told-DENIC) after completing the rapid visual information processing task with central emotional distracters (RVIP-CED). The RVIP-CED presented digits at a rapid pace, with participants instructed to respond with button presses to every third consecutive even or odd digit. Some digits were preceded by smoking, pleasant, unpleasant, or neutral distracter slides. During Told-NIC conditions, participants produced significantly longer RT latency than during Told-DENIC conditions. RT sensitivity (d'), a measure of the ability to discriminate true positives from false positives, was significantly lower during the Told-NIC than during the Told-DENIC conditions to targets following cigarette distracters. These results suggest that nicotine-deprived smokers expecting to imminently smoke a cigarette experience greater distraction, particularly to smoking-related stimuli, than when expecting to smoke a denicotinized cigarette.

Attentional bias to smoking and other motivationally relevant cues is affected by nicotine exposure and dose expectancy

“…The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center’s Institutional Review Board approved the protocol. Further information about the inclusion/exclusion criteria and participant recruitment can be found in our previous manuscript (Robinson et al, 2014). Fifty-five participants were randomized, but four of them only completed the initial laboratory session and were removed from further analysis, leaving 51 participants who were included in the current study.…”

“…Participants also rated half of the distracters they would be viewing at the subsequent laboratory sessions using valence (i.e., pleasure) and arousal ratings based on the self-assessment manikin (SAM; Lang, 1980), and a craving to smoke rating. The baseline questionnaire means and the SAM ratings, by distracter type, are detailed in a previous publication (Robinson et al, 2014). …”

“…Participants briefly rested during a 30-s break at the midpoint of each block. The results of the first block, which pertain to the question of smoking availability on AB, are detailed elsewhere (Robinson et al, 2014). Here, we report the results of the second block in order to focus on the BPD manipulation and its impact on AB during the RVIP-CED task, as measured by ERPs to the distracter pictures and RT to the target digits.…”

“…In addition to RT latency, hit rate, false positive rate, and accuracy, we calculated the signal detection metrics of sensitivity and response bias. As described in our previous publication (Robinson et al, 2014), we used parametric measures of sensitivity ( d ′) and response bias ( c ) because the distributions of both indices suggested that they were normally distributed. Following Macmillan (2004), we calculated d ′ as z (H) − z (FP), and c as −0.5 ( z [H] + z [FP]), where z = z -score distribution, H = hit rate (number of hits/number of target digits), and FP = false positive rate (number of false positives/number of non-target digits and distracters).…”

Emotion regulation in heavy smokers: experiential, expressive and physiological consequences of cognitive reappraisal

“…We used pictorial stimuli from the international affective picture system (IAPS) that has been widely applied in previous studies to assess general emotion regulation competency ( Ochsner et al, 2004 ; Hajcak et al, 2009 ; Moser et al, 2010 ). Since emotions are dispositions to action that involve multi-level responses ( Lang, 1995 ), we collected self-ratings ( Chae et al, 2008 ; Robinson et al, 2014 ), psychophysiological, i.e., facial electromyography (EMG; Geier et al, 2000 ; Winkler et al, 2011 , and brain responses (late positive potential, LPP; Littel and Franken, 2011 ; Versace et al, 2011 ) to evaluate emotional changes as a function of cognitive reappraisal. Facial electromyographic (EMG) reactions of the corrugator supercilii and zygomaticus major muscle has been suggested as sensitive index of negative and positive emotions ( Dimberg, 1990 ; Dimberg and Thunberg, 1998 ; Dimberg et al, 1998 ; Weyers et al, 2006 ; Mauss and Robinson, 2009 ; Wu et al, 2012 ).…”