Nicotine Polacrilex Gum and Sustained Attention

Abstract

The effects of nicotine chewing gum, and cigarette smoking, upon aspects of attention were investigated in three studies, using young nicotine-deprived smokers. In the first study, nicotine led to a significant linear dose-related improvement in rapid visual information processing (RVIP), target detection. In the second study, nicotine again led to improvements in RVIP target detection. A linear dose-response function was evident at the first post-test, while a curvilinear (Inverted-U) function was present at the second post-test period. In both studies, RVIP response time demonstrated curvilinear functions, with faster performance under 2mg and 4mg gum, but unchanged response times under placebo and cigarette. In the second study, three further attentional tasks were also undertaken. Letter cancellation response time was significantly improved by nicotine, in a linear dose-response manner. Neither Stroop task performance, nor performance on a width of attention task, were however affected. Thus in study 2, nicotine led to significant improvements in both measures of sustained attention, while indices of width of attention and distractabi1ity were not affected. In study 3, 4mg nicotine gum was compared with placebo gum. Regular smokers (+15 cigarettes/day), showed a non-significant tendency for improved RVIP target detection following the nicotine gum, whereas non-regular smokers (−5 cigarettes/day) showed similar RVIP performance levels after placebo and 4mg nicotine gum.