Departamento de Psicobiologia, Universidade Federal de São Paulo, São Paulo, São Paulo, Brazil.
Curso de Naturologia, Universidade Anhembi Morumbi, São Paulo, São Paulo, Brazil.
PLoS One. 2019 Aug 20;14(8):e0220222. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0220222. eCollection 2019.
Smoking cigarettes and low socioeconomic status (SES) are both related to impaired cognition. However, it is unknown whether people of lower SES, who comprise most tobacco smokers worldwide, are more susceptible to cognitive impairment associated with smoking. In this non-randomized, cross-sectional study we investigated the effects of cigarette smoking, SES and their interaction on dissociable executive or "cool" and "hot" measures of behavioural self-regulation. Participants (n = 80) were selected among young physically and mentally healthy smokers and non-smokers who had graduated high school and were from different SES backgrounds. Cool self-regulation was measured by executive function tasks that tap inhibition, updating, shifting, dual tasking, planning, access to long-term memory (semantic fluency), and working memory capacity. Hot measures assessed self-reported impulsivity, delay discounting and risk taking. Exposure to tobacco (cotinine, exhaled carbon monoxide, tobacco dependence, cigarette consumption) was assessed to determine to what extent it mediated the cognitive effects of smoking. Nicotine abstinence and its acute effects were controlled, as were sex, age, schooling, and psychiatric symptoms despite the fact that smokers and non-smokers were selected as being as similar as possible in these demographic characteristics. Lower SES (less years of parental schooling) was associated with worse performance on tasks that measured all cool domains except dual tasking and fluency, while smoking status was related to impaired delayed discounting and impulsivity (hot domains), effects that were not mediated by tobacco exposure. Smoking and SES, however, did not interact. In short, impaired performance in measures of most cool skills was associated with SES irrespective of smoking status; in contrast, regardless of SES, smokers showed specific impairment in hot self-regulation domains (more difficulty resisting immediate temptations and weighing future consequences of actions). Possible explanations for the lack of mediation of tobacco exposure on hot skills of smokers are discussed.
吸烟和低社会经济地位（SES）均与认知障碍有关。然而，目前尚不清楚全球大多数吸烟者中 SES 较低的人群是否更容易受到与吸烟相关的认知障碍的影响。在这项非随机的横断面研究中，我们研究了吸烟、SES 及其相互作用对可分离的执行或“冷”和“热”行为自我调节测量的影响。参与者（n=80）是从不同 SES 背景中选择的年轻身心健康的吸烟者和非吸烟者，他们已经高中毕业。冷自我调节通过执行功能任务进行测量，这些任务可测量抑制、更新、转换、双重任务、计划、长期记忆（语义流畅性）的访问以及工作记忆容量。热措施评估自我报告的冲动性、延迟折扣和冒险行为。评估了吸烟的暴露情况（可替宁、呼出的一氧化碳、烟草依赖、吸烟量），以确定其在多大程度上可以介导吸烟对认知的影响。尽管吸烟者和非吸烟者在这些人口统计学特征上尽可能相似，但控制了尼古丁戒断及其急性影响、性别、年龄、受教育程度和精神症状。较低的 SES（父母受教育年限较少）与所有冷域（除双重任务和流畅性外）的任务表现较差相关，而吸烟状况与延迟折扣和冲动性受损（热域）相关，这些影响不受吸烟暴露的影响。但是，吸烟和 SES 没有相互作用。简而言之，与吸烟状况无关，SES 与大多数冷技能的测量表现受损有关；相比之下，无论 SES 如何，吸烟者在热自我调节领域都表现出特定的损害（更难以抵制即时的诱惑，权衡行为的未来后果）。对于缺乏烟草暴露对吸烟者热技能的中介作用，讨论了可能的解释。
