Jarvik M E, Gross T M, Rosenblatt M R, Stein R E
West Los Angeles VA Medical Center Wadsworth, CA, USA.
Psychopharmacology (Berl). 1995 Mar;118(2):136-41. doi: 10.1007/BF02245831.
In a group of heavy smokers, overnight abstinence from smoking facilitated the perception of briefly presented smoking words. Subjects in the nicotine-abstinent 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.
