The visual attentional pattern toward smoking area signs in legal and illegal cigarette smokers: Preliminary findings

Abstract

Attentional patterns towards signs of smoking area might be different on individual levels. This would play a significant role in the decision-making process of illegal smoking behavior. In order to understand and effectively intervene the such behavior, this study aims to investigate the attentional pattern of the legal and illegal smokers toward the area signs (e.g. smoking area vs. no-smoking area) using a free viewing task and eye-tracking method. The participants were grouped into 25 legal smokers groups (LSG) and 15 illegal smokers groups (ISG) based on their usual smoking spots specified in the self-report questionnaire. During the free-viewing task where their visual attentional pattern was measured by an eye-tracking method, the participants were presented with eight pictorial stimuli with the area signs and the smoking-related cues. To examine the initial orientation process, the initial fixation latency, total dwell time, and dwell time by time blocks were analyzed for the smoking area signs. As a result, while LSG showed faster initial fixation toward the smoking area signs than no-smoking area signs, ISG did not. Also, LSG showed higher proportion of initial visual attention to smoking area signs. These findings suggest that the initial orienting attentional pattern of LSG toward the area signs might play a significant role in the legal smoking behavior.