The pharmacological and expectancy-related cognitive effects of nicotine in cigarettes will be studied to extend previous nicotine research into an important new area: metacognition (i.e., individuals' monitoring and control of their learning processes). This study will be the first to examine the relationship between nicotine and metacognition. This link is especially important in students who smoke, because the number of cigarettes consumed tends to increase during study. Pharmacological effects will be assessed using commercially available cigarettes with known levels of nicotine and control cigarettes without nicotine. Two aspects of expectancy will be examined: (1) smokers' personal beliefs about how cigarettes influence their cognitive performance, and (2) smokers' expectations about whether or not the cigarette they receive actually no contains nicotine (manipulated through instructional sets). Despite a substantial body of research pointing to cognitive changes in smokers due to nicotine, little research has examined the role of expectancies. Because the maintenance of cigarette smoking involves pharmacological and behavioral variables, assessing the role of expectancy is a major goal for nicotine research. Understanding the relationship between these variables may help explain why students continue to smoke despite negative health and social outcomes. Experiment 1 incorporates a double-blind, placebo-controlled designed to achieve two aims: (1) Determine whether nicotine delivered in cigarettes influences performance on tests of sustained attention, memory, and metacognition compared with nicotine-free cigarettes; and (2) Determine whether individuals' personal beliefs about how cigarettes will influence their attention, memory, and metacognition are related to their actual performance. Experiment 2 uses a 2 X 2 (receive nicotine cigarette vs. receive nicotine-free cigarette by expect nicotine vs. expect nicotine-free) balanced-placebo design to accomplish three aims: (1) Determine whether expecting to receive nicotine in cigarettes influences attention, memory, and metacognition in the absence of the drug; (2) Directly compare the magnitude of the pharmacological versus expectancy effects of nicotine in cigarettes, and test for interactions between these variables; and (3) Demonstrate that a balanced-placebo design can be executed successfully in smoking research on cognition, which yields important data not obtained with traditional procedures. ? ?
| Kelemen, William L (2008) Stimulus and Response Expectancies Influence the Cognitive Effects of Cigarettes. J Smok Cessat 3:136-143 |
| Kelemen, William L; Kaighobadi, Farnaz (2007) Expectancy and pharmacology influence the subjective effects of nicotine in a balanced-placebo design. Exp Clin Psychopharmacol 15:93-101 |
