Abstract
In a group of heavy smokers, overnight abstinence from smoking facilitated the perception of briefly presented smoking words. Subjects in the nicotineabstinent condition accurately identified significantly more smoking-related words than food-related or neutral words. However, a group tested in a non-abstinent condition showed no significant differences in ability to identify the three different word types. Smokers deprived of cigarettes were also significantly better able to categorize smoking words than non-abstinent subjects. These results demonstrate an abstinence-based facilitation of processing smoking-related stimuli at the semantic level, consistent with the hypothesis that smoking-related concepts are activated, or primed, during deprivation from nicotine.
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Jarvik, M.E., Gross, T.M., Rosenblatt, M.R. et al. Enhanced lexical processing of smoking stimuli during smoking abstinence. Psychopharmacology 118, 136–141 (1995). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02245831
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02245831