From the Office to the Pub: The Role of Smoking-Relevant Contexts and Cue-Elicited Urge to Smoke.
June 29th, 2008 | by admin |From the Office to the Pub: The Role of Smoking-Relevant Contexts and Cue-Elicited Urge to Smoke.
The present study investigates how environmental contexts can affect cue-elicited urge to smoke. A total of 33 smokers were repeatedly presented with a cue predicting smoking and a cue predicting no smoking in one room and the effect of context change in a different room was assessed. Results endorsed earlier findings that a cue predicting smoking availability elicited more urge to smoke than a cue predicting smoking unavailability. Furthermore, this study shows that a context switch from a low smoking-relevant room to a high smoking-relevant room reduces the learned differential urge responding between the two availability cues. These findings are discussed in relation to the role that smoking-relevant contexts play in the generalization of differential urge responding after a context switch. Furthermore, implications for government policies on smoking and clinical issues are discussed. Copyright © 2008 S. Karger AG, Basel.
Thewissen R, van der Meijden VA, Havermans RC, van den Hout M, Jansen A.
Department of Medical, Clinical and Experimental Psychology, Maastricht University, Maastricht, The Netherlands.