This happens without people realizing it

Dec 8, 2009 09:56 GMT  ·  By
Craving a smoke can easily hinder our ability to analyze our own thoughts, without us even knowing it
   Craving a smoke can easily hinder our ability to analyze our own thoughts, without us even knowing it

A new scientific study seems to suggest that cigarette cravings that people who have just quit smoking have may be hindering their ability to concentrate and understand a simple task, without them even knowing this. The cravings also increase the chances of that person's mind wandering. The science group behind the investigation has determined that this also happens without the individual having the cravings knowing it does. Details of the amazing work appear in the January issue of the scientific journal Psychological Science, PhysOrg reports.

The new research document, entitled “Out for a Smoke: The Impact of Cigarette Craving on Zoning Out During Reading,” is also one of the first investigations ever to prove that craving for something has the ability to disrupt a person's meta-awareness. The latter is a concept that refers to each individual's abilities to appraise his or her own thoughts periodically. Meta-cognition can therefore be defined simply as thinking about thoughts, and human beings are the only species that researchers determined to be capable of performing this highly complex task.

In the new experiments, which were conducted by scientists at the University of Pittsburgh and the University of California in Santa Barbara (UCSB), 44 heavy smokers, both male and female, were divided into two groups. Members from one of them were allowed to smoke freely throughout the study, whereas the others were told not to do it. All of them were then made to read about 34 pages of Lev Tolstoy's “War and Peace,” displayed on a computer screen. If the participants found themselves zoning out, they were to press a key labeled ZO. Otherwise, every few minutes, they were asked via the screen if they were zoning out, and they had to respond with “yes” or “no.”

Some 30 minutes into the study, the participants were subjected to a reading-comprehension test. According to the final results, people in the crave group – who were forbidden to smoke – were 300 percent more likely to wander off in their minds than those in the group that was allowed to smoke at will. As far as meta-awareness goes – the instances when the participants were asked to catch themselves zoning out –, the two groups exhibited nearly identical abilities. However, this shouldn't have been the case, as those in the crave group in fact zoned out three times more often, so they had three times more chances of surprising themselves while their mind wandered.

“Researchers have known for a while that cigarette craving can interfere with our powers of concentration. But, similar to what we found in a previous study about the impaired concentration of people who drank, this 'double whammy' (i.e., more zone outs that take longer to recognize) may explain why craving often disrupts efforts to exercise self-control-a process requiring the ability to become aware of your current state in order to regulate it,” PU Professor of Psychology Michael Sayette, the leader of the new investigation, explains.