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Discriminative stimuli that control instrumental tobacco-seeking by human smokers also command selective attention

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Abstract

Rationale

Incentive salience theory states that acquired bias in selective attention for stimuli associated with tobacco-smoke reinforcement controls the selective performance of tobacco-seeking and tobacco-taking behaviour.

Objectives

To support this theory, we assessed whether a stimulus that had acquired control of a tobacco-seeking response in a discrimination procedure would command the focus of visual attention in a subsequent test phase.

Methods

Smokers received discrimination training in which an instrumental key-press response was followed by tobacco-smoke reinforcement when one visual discriminative stimulus (S+) was present, but not when another stimulus (S−) was present. The skin conductance response to the S+ and S− assessed whether Pavlovian conditioning to the S+ had taken place. In a subsequent test phase, the S+ and S− were presented in the dot-probe task and the allocation of the focus of visual attention to these stimuli was measured.

Results

Participants learned to perform the instrumental tobacco-seeking response selectively in the presence of the S+ relative to the S−, and showed a greater skin conductance response to the S+ than the S−. In the subsequent test phase, participants allocated the focus of visual attention to the S+ in preference to the S−. Correlation analysis revealed that the visual attentional bias for the S+ was positively associated with the number of times the S+ had been paired with tobacco-smoke in training, the skin conductance response to the S+ and with subjective craving to smoke. Furthermore, increased exposure to tobacco-smoke in the natural environment was associated with reduced discrimination learning.

Conclusions

These data demonstrate that discriminative stimuli that signal that tobacco-smoke reinforcement is available acquire the capacity to command selective attentional and elicit instrumental tobacco-seeking behaviour.

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Acknowledgement

This work was supported by a Wellcome Trust Research Grant no. 061162.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Laboratory of Experimental Psychology, School of Biological Sciences, University of Sussex, Falmer, Brighton, Sussex, BN1 9QG, UK

    Lee Hogarth & Theodora Duka

  2. Department of Experimental Psychology, University of Cambridge, Downing Street, Cambridge, CB2 3EB, UK

    Anthony Dickinson

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  1. Lee Hogarth
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  2. Anthony Dickinson
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  3. Theodora Duka
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Correspondence to Theodora Duka.

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Hogarth, L., Dickinson, A. & Duka, T. Discriminative stimuli that control instrumental tobacco-seeking by human smokers also command selective attention. Psychopharmacology 168, 435–445 (2003). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00213-003-1456-4

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00213-003-1456-4

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