Interest in female smoking behaviors has grown due to research that has
highlighted gender differences in smoking cessation trends. Specifically, female
smokers tend to lag behind men in their success in smoking cessation and are more
likely to report weight gain concerns. The first goal of this project is to examine the
effect of smoking deprivation on smoking and chocolate cravings. In examining
smoking deprivation and cravings, the goal is to also determine the affective
motivational system underlying craving. Female cigarette smokers (N = 42) were
recruited and randomly assigned to either a 10-hour smoking abstinence group or a
control group. We examined both self-reported cravings and startle-eye blink responses
to visual smoking and chocolate cues. Our results indicated that smoking and chocolate
cravings are appetitive for both abstinent and non-abstinent female smokers. Both the
psychophysiological and self-report data also indicate that female smokers who abstain
from smoking for a short duration seem to be less sensitive to positive reinforcing
stimuli than those who continued to smoke. The implications of these findings are
discussed.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:tamu.edu/oai:repository.tamu.edu:1969.1/ETD-TAMU-1855 |
| Date | 02 June 2009 |
| Creators | Susabda, Agnes |
| Contributors | Cepeda-Benito, Antonio |
| Source Sets | Texas A and M University |
| Language | en_US |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Book, Thesis, Electronic Thesis, text |
| Format | electronic, application/pdf, born digital |
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