The effect of context on physiology and smoking behaviour

Morris, Paul Haydn (1989) The effect of context on physiology and smoking behaviour. University of Southampton, Doctoral Thesis.

Abstract

Nesbitt (1973) identified the paradox that smokers report that smoking has both a stimulant and a sedative effect, but the vast majority of physiological studies of smoking find that smoking has only a stimulant effect. It has been suggested (Ashton and Stepney, 1982) that the physiological effects of smoking vary as a function of context. This hypothesis was investigated in the thesis by an examination of the effects of smoking on physiology, smoking behaviour and task performance in a variety of situations. Smoking behaviour was measured very precisely using a purpose built smoking behaviour analyser. The data from these studies should give conclusive evidence for or against the arousal modulation theory. Physiological data should tell us if arousal modulation is taking place. The exact description of smoking behaviour should tell us how the different physiological effects are being achieved. The performance data should tell us the functional significance of the physiological changes observed. Experiment One: a comparison was made between the effects of real smoking and sham smoking (puffing on an unlit cigarette) on electrodermal activity (EDA) in a neutral environment. The effect of smoking in this environment was found to be stimulant. Smoking caused increased EDA activity as compared to a baseline and as compared to activity in the sham smoking condition. A relationship between puffs and physiology was also revealed, a skin conductance response (SCR) occurring immediately prior to puff onset. As the SCR occurred prior to puff onset it was hypothesised that the SCR was related to the decision to puff rather than the SCR occurring as the result of a puff. Puffing behaviour in the two conditions was found to be highly correlated. We were measuring a stable phenomenon in a reliable way. Experiment Two: it has been suggested (Knott, 1980) that smoking has a sedative effect during complex cognitive processing tasks. In the second study the effect of smoking on EDA activity, smoking behaviour and performance was examined. There was unequivocal evidence that smoking sedated physiology during a complex cognitive processing task. No clear performance effects were revealed and no coherent account of how smoking was bringing about the different effects on physiology could be developed from the smoking behaviour data. However it was revealed that smoking behaviour was affected by environmental factors, the distribution of puffs being powerfully influenced by task performance. Experiment Three: Wesnes and Warburton (1983) have found that smoking improves vigilance performance. This type of task was thought to provide the best chance of producing measurable performance changes as a function of smoking. Smoking was found to have a marginal effect on performance. The effect of smoking on physiology in this context was stimulant. Again no clear explanation of how the different effects were being achieved emerged from the smoking behaviour data. It was concluded that smoking did have a variety of physiological effects but the motivation for smoking could not be attributed to these physiological changes as they seemed to be of no functional significance. Thus although the physiological effects of smoking observed in the studies seem powerful support for the arousal modulation theory, it is not clear why such changes should be desirable to the smoker. However the studies revealed many other interesting results. Smoking behaviour is incredibly stable, correlations of .9 or over on retest being commonplace. Thus laboratory investigations of smoking behaviour may have high ecological validity as compared to other laboratory studies. It was also revealed that smoking behaviour is powerfully influenced by environmental factors.

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