Smoking deprivation and cigarette reinstatement: effects upon visual attention.

Twenty regular smokers ( > 15 cigarettes/day), were tested on a letter cancellation task, over four successive days. On one of the test days subjects were smoking deprived for > 12 h, while on the other days they were not nicotine deprived (smoking was allowed until 1 h before testing). The first letter cancellation test was given prior to smoking. Then one cigarette was smoked and a second letter cancellation test given. Performance was significantly impaired by nicotine deprivation, when assessed both by response time (p < 0.05) and target detection (p < 0.001). Cigarette smoking led to significant improvements in both speed and accuracy with the deprived smokers. However, this improved performance basically reflected a return to near baseline values. The performance of the non-deprived subjects remained largely unchanged. There was no evidence of performance differences between high, mid and low frequency letter targets. Each showed an accuracy reduction of about 5% during smoking deprivation, and returned to baseline following nicotine reinstatement. Thus, while sustained attention was significantly influenced by nicotine status, there was no evidence of altered attentional selectivity.