Classical conditioning of environmental cues to cigarette smoking.

Smoking-related cues tend to produce urges and cardiac responses in smokers. This reactivity has been assumed to reflect prior classical conditioning. However, little direct evidence exists supporting the notion that environmental cues can be classically conditioned to cigarette smoking. In this study, 8 smokers received 22 daily trials during which 2 cue complexes (comprising visual, olfactory, and auditory stimuli) were paired with smoking (CS+ trials) and not smoking (CS– trials). Reactivity to the environmental cues, as measured by self-report of urge and pulse rate, increased across CS+ trials, diverging from responses in the CS– trials. Reactivity was stronger among light smokers and those who verbalized awareness of smoking contingencies. Findings indicate that environmental cues can be classically conditioned to smoking. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

A day at a time: Predicting smoking lapse from daily urge.

Smokers who recently quit (N?=?214) monitored smoking urges for up to 26 days after quitting. Computers administered 4–5 assessments daily at random times; participants rated urges on waking and when they experienced temptation episodes. Urge intensity after cessation did not generally exceed urges reported during baseline ad lib smoking. Urge intensity and temptation frequency consistently declined over the quit period. Controlling for urge intensity at baseline, all daily urge intensity measures predicted lapse the following day in proportional hazards survival analyses. Average duration of temptation episodes also predicted lapses; frequency of temptation did not. To isolate the effect of day-to-day variations in urges, participants' nicotine dependence and urge intensity on quit day were controlled for. Only urge intensity at waking still predicted lapse risk; this was not because of this measure being closer in time to the day's lapses. Among lapsers, urge intensity at waking and in temptations rose preceding a lapse. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Reactivity of alcoholics and nonalcoholics to drinking cues.

An interest in reducing relapse among alcoholics has led to a consideration of stimulus control factors in drinking. Research suggests that through classical conditioning alcoholics may develop reactions to cues previously associated with drinking and that these reactions might be an important determinant of relapse. Although this model indicates the potential for cue exposure treatment methods to alter conditioned reactions, data on reactivity to alcohol cues by alcoholics and nonalcoholics are scarce. Two studies are presented that address this issue and provide evidence for the validity of salivation as a measure of cue reactivity. Alcoholics and nonalcoholics were presented with the sight and smell of their preferred brand of alcohol and a control beverage. Self-report, behavioral, and psychophysiological data were collected. Alcoholics salivated more than nonalcoholics to alcohol cues and more to alcohol than to the control beverage. Alcoholics salivated differentially to cues, whereas nonalcoholics did not. Patterns of reactivity were consistent with a conditioning model. Both groups reported greater urges to drink alcohol in the presence of alcohol, but neither group reported more thoughts about alcohol in the presence of alcohol as compared with the control beverage. Implications of salivary reactivity for theory and treatment are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Automatic affective responses to smoking cues.

The authors examined automatic emotional reactions to smoking cues among 35 smokers and 25 nonsmokers (32 women and 28 men), using a novel implicit measure, the Affect Misattribution Procedure. Associative-learning theories of addiction suggest that smokers develop positive responses to cues linked to the rewarding effects of nicotine. Prior research, however, has yielded mixed evidence for whether smokers have favorable or unfavorable automatic responses to smoking cues. These findings may depend on the methods used to measure implicit responses. Using the Affect Misattribution Procedure, the authors found that nonsmokers responded to smoking cues with clear negative affect, whereas smokers' responses depended on individual differences in current smoking withdrawal. Smokers having withdrawal symptoms and those most motivated to smoke showed favorable emotional responses to smoking cues, but those with no withdrawal or low motivation to smoke showed negative responses. These results help integrate previous studies finding that smokers have negative automatic responses to cigarettes with those studies finding that smokers' responses were relatively positive. The results are important for theories that emphasize the role of cue conditioning in maintaining addiction because these theories assume, consistent with the current findings, that smoking cues can take on positive reward value. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Facial reactions to smoking cues relate to ambivalence about smoking.

In this study, the authors used the Facial Action Coding System (FACS; P. Ekman & W. V. Friesen, 1978) to examine the immediate facial responses of abstinent smokers exposed to smoking cues. The aim was to investigate whether facial expressions thought to be linked to ambivalence would relate to more traditional measures of ambivalence about smoking. The authors adapted N. A. Heather's (1998) definition of ambivalence about smoking, which emphasizes difficulty in refraining from smoking despite intentions to do so. Ambivalence expressed during smoking cue exposure was operationalized as the simultaneous occurrence of positive and negative affect-related facial expressions. Thirty-four nicotine-deprived dependent smokers were presented with in vivo smoking cues, and their facial expressions were coded using FACS. Participants also completed self-report measures related to ambivalence about smoking. Smokers who displayed ambivalent facial expressions during smoking cue exposure reported significantly higher scores on measures of smoking ambivalence than did those who did not display ambivalent facial expressions. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Aging and Cardiovascular Reactivity to Stress: Longitudinal Evidence for Changes in Stress Reactivity.

Although age differences in cardiovascular function are well documented, little research has provided longitudinal evidence for age-related changes in cardiovascular reactivity to stress. In this study, the authors report such data from a follow-up of their prior work (B. N. Uchino, D. Uno, J. Holt-Lunstad, & J. B. Flinders, 1999) with participants between the ages of 30 to 70 (n=108, mean follow-up=10 months, range=7 to 16 months). Results revealed longitudinal evidence for an age-related increase in systolic blood-pressure reactivity and parasympathetic withdrawal to acute stress. The implications of these findings are discussed in light of the increased cardiovascular disease risk with age, as well as the links between aging, emotions, and physiology. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Pain as a motivator of smoking: Effects of pain induction on smoking urge and behavior.

Tobacco smoking has been associated with the development and exacerbation of chronically painful conditions. Conversely, there is reason to believe that smokers may be motivated to use tobacco as a means of coping with their pain. To date, no controlled, experimental studies have tested for a causal relationship between pain and smoking motivation. The primary aim of the current study was to test the hypothesis that laboratory-induced cold pressor pain would enhance smoking motivation, as measured by self-reported urge to smoke and observation of immediate smoking behavior. Smokers (N = 132) were randomly assigned to either pain or no pain conditions. Results indicated that situational pain increased urge ratings and produced shorter latencies to smoke. The relationship between pain and increased urge to smoke was partially mediated by pain-induced negative affect. The relationship between pain and shorter latency to smoke was fully mediated by pain-induced urge to smoke. This study provides the 1st experimental evidence that situational pain can be a potent motivator of smoking. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Effects of suppressing the urge to drink on smoking topography: A preliminary study.

Recent studies on the co-occurrent use of alcohol and tobacco have suggested that efforts to control the use of one substance may influence the use of the other. However, little is known about how cognitive strategies used to regulate the use of one substance may affect cross-substance use. In this study, 50 social drinkers who were daily smokers were exposed to the sight and smell of their favorite alcoholic beverage under instructions to either monitor or suppress their urge for alcohol. During a subsequent trial, participants were permitted to smoke while smoking topography was assessed. Although urge ratings were not influenced by instructional set, participants who had previously suppressed their urge to drink alcohol showed more intense smoking behavior than those who had monitored. Results are discussed in terms of the cross-substance effects of urge suppression and their implications for polysubstance treatment. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Statistical learning in a serial reaction time task: Access to separable statistical cues by individual learners.

The ability of adult learners to exploit the joint and conditional probabilities in a serial reaction time task containing both deterministic and probabilistic information was investigated. Learners used the statistical information embedded in a continuous input stream to improve their performance for certain transitions by simultaneously exploiting differences in the predictability of 2 or more underlying statistics. Analysis of individual learners revealed that although most acquired the underlying statistical structure veridically, others used an alternate strategy that was partially predictive of the sequences. The findings show that learners possess a robust learning device well suited to exploiting the relative predictability of more than 1 source of statistical information at the same time. This work expands on previous studies of statistical learning, as well as studies of artificial grammar learning and implicit sequence learning. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Movie exposure to smoking cues and adolescent smoking onset: A test for mediation through peer affiliations.

Objective: To determine whether the effect of movie exposure to smoking on adolescent smoking onset is mediated through increased affiliation with peers who smoke. Design: A longitudinal study was conducted with a sample of 5th- 8th graders; persons who were nonsmokers at the baseline assessment (N = 2,614) were followed up 18 months later. Movie exposure to smoking cues was assessed at baseline with a rigorous coding procedure. Main Outcome Measure: A school-based survey and follow-up telephone interview determined whether the participant smoked cigarettes. Results: Longitudinal structural modeling analysis indicated movie-smoking exposure was related to smoking onset both through an indirect effect involving increased affiliation with peer smokers and through a direct effect. The analysis controlled for demographics, parenting style, rebelliousness and sensation seeking, school performance, parental smoking, and sibling smoking; several of these variables also had mediated or direct effects to smoking onset. Conclusion: The effect of movie exposure on adolescent smoking onset is attributable in part to a social mechanism. Implications of media effects for prevention are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Effects of smoking opportunity on cue-elicited urge: A facial coding analysis.

The authors analyzed smokers' facial expressions using the Facial Action Coding System (P. Ekman & W. V. Friesen. 1978) under varying smoking opportunity conditions. In Experiment 1, smokers first were told that they either could (told-yes) or could not (told-no) smoke during the study. Told-yes smokers reported higher urges than did told-no smokers. Unexpectedly, told-yes smokers became increasingly likely to manifest expressions related to negative affect and less likely to evince expressions related to positive affect, compared with told-no smokers. In Experiment 2, smokers were more likely to show positive affect-related expressions if the delay was 15 s than if it was 60 s. Craving may be related to both a desire to use and an impatient desire to use immediately. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Negative affect combines with smoking outcome expectancies to predict smoking behavior over time.

The present study examined whether the tendency to experience negative affective states combines with smoking outcome expectancies to predict smoking behavior over time. Participants were 121 young adults and resource people recruited from 3 alcohol and drug treatment programs and through community advertisements. Each participant completed 3 interviews over a 4-year period. Results indicated that dispositional negative affect and positive smoking expectancies were significantly correlated with smoking behavior both within and across time. Expectations of positive and negative reinforcement partially mediated negative affect's relation with smoking across time. Positive expectancies did not function as a moderator of negative affect's relation with smoking behavior. These results represent an important step in incorporating smoking outcome expectancies into multivariate models of smoking risk. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The DRD4 VNTR polymorphism influences reactivity to smoking cues.

Recent research has indicated that craving for tobacco can be reliably elicited by exposure to smoking cues, suggesting that cue-elicited craving for tobacco may be a useful phenotype for research on genetic factors related to nicotine dependence. Given the potential role of dopamine in cue-elicited craving, the authors examined whether the DRD4 VNTR polymorphism is associated with cue-elicited craving for tobacco. Participants who were homozygous or heterozygous for the 7 repeat (or longer) allele were classified as DRD4 L and all other participants were classified as DRD4 S. Participants were exposed to smoking cues before smoking either high-nicotine cigarettes or control cigarettes. Analyses suggested that participants in the L group demonstrated significantly greater craving, more arousal, less positive affect, and more attention to the smoking cues than did the participants in the S group. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Differentiation and response bias in episodic memory: Evidence from reaction time distributions.

In differentiation models, the processes of encoding and retrieval produce an increase in the distribution of memory strength for targets and a decrease in the distribution of memory strength for foils as the amount of encoding increases. This produces an increase in the hit rate and decrease in the false-alarm rate for a strongly encoded compared with a weakly encoded list, consistent with empirical data. Other models assume that the foil distribution is unaffected by encoding manipulations or the foil distribution increases as a function of target strength. They account for the empirical data by adopting a stricter criterion for strongly encoded lists relative to weakly encoded lists. The differentiation and criterion shift explanations have been difficult to discriminate with accuracy measures alone. In this article, reaction time distributions and accuracy measures are collected in a list-strength paradigm and in a response bias paradigm in which the proportion of test items that are targets is manipulated. Diffusion model analyses showed that encoding strength is primarily accounted for by changes in the rate of accumulation of evidence (i.e., drift rate) for both targets and foils and manipulating the proportion of targets is primarily accounted for by changes in response bias (i.e., starting point). The diffusion model analyses is interpreted in terms of predictions of the differentiation models in which subjective memory strength is mapped directly onto drift rate and criterion placement is mapped onto starting point. Criterion shift models require at least 2 types of shifts to account for these findings. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Differential urge and salivary responsivity to alcohol cues in alcohol-dependent patients: A comparison of traditional and stringent classification approaches.

Seventy alcohol-dependent individuals were presented with alcohol and water cues on separate trials while salivary responding and self-reported urge for alcohol were measured. Researchers used 2 distinct classification approaches to classify participants as either responders or nonresponders on urge and salivation. Through a traditional classification approach, both urge and salivary responder groups reported higher pleasantness ratings in response to the alcohol cues than nonresponders, yet did not differ on measures of alcohol dependence or withdrawal. Through a more stringent classification approach, salivation responders reported fewer days since their last drink of alcohol and higher pleasantness ratings in response to the alcohol cues than the salivation nonresponder group. The stringently classified urge responders reported higher pleasantness ratings in response to the alcohol cues and more psychiatric distress than the urge nonresponder group. The stringently classified responder groups did not report more alcohol dependence or withdrawal symptoms. There was modest agreement between self-reported urge for alcohol and the physiological measure of salivation. Theoretical and treatment implications are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Reactivity to visual signals and the cerebellar vermis: Evidence from a rare case with rhombencephalosynapsis.

The modulatory role of the cerebellum was investigated in a case with rhombencephalosynapsis (RS), a rare dysplasia characterized by the absence of the cerebellar vermis. The visual psychophysical task involved localizing a target and ignoring a distractor appearing either before, at the same time as, or after the target. It allowed us to assess reactivity to warning signals, distraction, and reactivity to signals appearing during attentive processing. Compared with a control sample, the patient exhibited greater reactivity to warning signals and difficulties interrupting attentive processing, whereas distraction was not increased. Complementary analyses showed that these deficits did not reflect just delayed development of attentional processes. These results suggest that the cerebellum modulates responsiveness and commands attentional/exploratory flexibility in response to sensory signals. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Induction of smoking urge through imaginal and in vivo procedures: Physiological and self-report manifestations.

This experiment assessed reactivity to imaginal and in vivo smoking and control cues. One hundred current smokers were assessed during 2 sessions separated by a 6-hr interval, and half of the participants were abstinent from smoking over this interval. Verbal and physiological reactivity measures were selected based on their relevance for several models of urge. Results indicated that imaginal and in vivo smoking cues were equally effective at eliciting high levels of self-reported urges. Smoking deprivation led to a general enhancement in urge report, rather than a specific increase to smoking cues. Physiological responding differed somewhat as a function of urge induction method, although autonomic responses to smoking cues were uniformly consistent with the direct effects of nicotine. There was no relationship between verbal and physiological urge indices. Implications of the findings for several contemporary models of drug urges are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Goal priming and eating behavior: Enhancing self-regulation by environmental cues.

Objective: Several lines of research have shown that the confrontation with attractive food can trigger overeating, especially in restrained eaters. This effect may be driven by a hedonic orientation toward food which temporarily overrules the goal of dieting in the regulation of behavior. The present study was designed to provide an experimental demonstration of this effect in a naturalistic setting, and to show that reactivating the goal of dieting by a subtle prime in the environment can help restrained eaters to regulate their eating behavior in tempting situations. Design: In a local store where the smell of grilled chicken was present, we observed the number of free meat snacks customers sampled from a tray after they had been primed with the dieting goal or not. Main Outcome Measures: Number of snacks consumed. Results: Consistent with hypotheses, restrained eaters ate more than unrestrained eaters in the control condition. However, they reduced their eating behavior when primed with dieting, whereas this manipulation did not affect unrestrained eaters. Conclusion: This study shows that unobtrusively priming the goal of dieting can enhance self-regulation in tempting eating situations. These results are discussed in the context of recent advances in our understanding of nonconscious behavior regulation and their applications to health behavior. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)