Smokers' expectancies for smoking versus nicotine

This study compared smokers' expectancies for the full act of smoking with those for nicotine per se by means of a word association task. Smokers (N = 201) were randomized to receive instructions to complete either "Smoking makes one ____." or "Nicotine makes one ____." with as many words as possible within 30 s. Results indicated that smokers held similar expectancies for smoking and nicotine; however, negative consequences (e.g., health risks) were more associated with smoking than with nicotine, and addiction expectancies were more associated with nicotine than with smoking. These findings suggest that smokers have a more realistic conceptualization of nicotine's role in smoking than had been indicated from earlier surveys. These findings have important implications for both nicotine-based and behavioral interventions, as well as for experimental designs that rely upon the perceived manipulation of nicotine content.     

Eliminating national stereotypes: Direct versus indirect disconfirmation of beliefs in covariation

Two modes of disconfirmation of national stereotypes were compared. It was hypo-thesized that stereotypes should be revised either by stereotype-inconsistent cases from the primary target (i.e., direct disconfirmation) or by instances which belong to an alternative target but possess features stereotypic of the primary target (indirect disconfirmation). It was further predicted that politically liberal individuals would show greater change in their national stereotypes than conservatives. Two experiments were conducted in which the salience of directly and indirectly disconfirming information regarding different nations was manipulated. The results indicated that indirect disconfirmation generally had as much impact as direct disconfirmation, but that the effects were particularly visible among liberal participants. Conservatives tended to respond in a reactive manner which preserved or exaggerated their original views. A new theoretical framework for the study of stereotype change and implications for its application were discussed.     

Computing and comparing correlation and regression coefficients using a pocket calculator

Programs suitable for pocket calculators using reverse Polish notation are described. Program 1 computes regression coefficients, correlation coefficient, and standard error of estimate for paired data. Program 2 performs at test to compare the slopes of two regression lines. Program 3 computes F ratios to test the departure of a regression slope from zero and to test linearity of the regression. Programs 4 and 5 test the significance of (differences between independent and correlated correlation coefficients, respectively.     

The effectiveness of narrative versus informational smoking education on smoking beliefs,attitudes and intentions of low-educated adolescents

Objective: This study tests the effectiveness of narrative versus informational smoking education on smoking beliefs, attitudes and intentions of low-educated adolescents.

Design: A field experiment with three waves of data collection was conducted. Participants (N = 256) were students who attend lower secondary education. At the first and third waves, they completed a questionnaire. At the second wave, 50.8% of the participants read a smoking education booklet in narrative form and 49.2% read a booklet in informational form. After reading, all participants also completed a questionnaire at wave 2.

Main outcome measures: Beliefs about negative consequences of smoking, attitudes towards smoking and intentions to smoke were measured.

Results: Repeated measures analyses with time as a within-subjects factor and condition as a between-subjects factor showed that beliefs about smoking were more negative at Wave 2 compared to Wave 1, irrespective of condition. However, attitudes towards smoking were more positive at Wave 3 compared to Wave 1 when participants had read the narrative version.

Conclusion: These results show that narrative smoking education is not more effective than informational smoking education for low-educated adolescents and can even have an unintended effect for this target group by making attitudes towards smoking more positive.     

Concurrent brief versus intensive smoking intervention during alcohol dependence treatment.

Alcohol dependent smokers (N=118) enrolled in an intensive outpatient substance abuse treatment program were randomized to a concurrent brief or intensive smoking cessation intervention. Brief treatment consisted of a 15-min counseling session with 5 min of follow-up. Intensive intervention consisted of three 1-hr counseling sessions plus 8 weeks of nicotine patch therapy. The cigarette abstinence rate, verified by breath carbon monoxide, was significantly higher for the intensive treatment group (27.5%) versus the rate for the brief treatment group (6.6%) at 1 month after the quit date but not at 6 months, when abstinence rates fell to 9.1% for the intensive treatment group and 2.1% for the brief treatment group. Smoking treatment assignment did not significantly impact alcohol outcomes. Although intensive smoking treatment was associated with higher rates of short-term tobacco abstinence, other, perhaps more intensive, smoking interventions are needed to produce lasting smoking cessation in alcohol dependent smokers.     

Effects of using self-recording and self-observation in reducing disruptive behavior

In an attempt to reduce the levels of disruptive behavior, six participants in a school for students with behavior disorders were shown edited videotapes depicting themselves appropriately engaged in classroom activities. The participants were first exposed to a training condition in which both appropriate and inappropriate behaviors of a peer were either observed or observed and recorded. In the intervention condition, the participants either self-observed and self-recorded their behaviors from videotape or simply observed themselves on videotape. The results showed idiosyncratic effects across both conditions. Measures of treatment integrity and treatment acceptability were also conducted. The results of this study are compared with similar research investigating self-observation interventions.     

Persuasive constraint and expert versus non‐expert influence in intention to quit smoking

In a 2 × 2 design, after listing important personal reasons for smoking, 70 smokers were randomly told either that they had sufficient reasons for smoking (low internal constraint to change) or that they did not have sufficient reasons (high internal constraint to change) and were exposed to an anti‐smoking message from a source with either expert (high external constraint to change) or non‐expert (low external constraint to change) status. The main dependent variable was change in intention to give up smoking. The analyses revealed the predicted interaction between external and internal constraint: High internal constraint increased non‐expert influence but not expert influence. Supplementary analysis showed that, when internal constraint was high, non‐expert influence was related to the perceived quality of the message whereas when internal constraint was low, expert influence was related to the source's perceived motivation to inform, i.e. rather than to convince. These results were predicted on the basis of the link that targets establish in social influence settings between constraints to change that are internal (i.e. related to their personal beliefs, feelings or attitudes) and those that are external (i.e. related to the characteristics of the persuasive communication such as the status of the source). Copyright © 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Four-year results of a youth smoking prevention program using assertiveness training

Assertiveness training and its relationship to smoking behavior and how young adolescent boys and girls differ with respect to assertion was investigated. A total of 161 seventh-grade students from six health education classes participated. Two classes received an innovative smoking education program, two classes received assertiveness training plus an innovative smoking education program, and two classes received only the smoking education program usually offered by the school. Locus of control and levels of assertion and smoking behavior were assessed at pre- and posttest. The results indicate that boys are significantly more assertive than girls at age 12 (p = .0018), and this assertiveness increases equally over the next four years (p less than .0001). There were no significant differences in smoking behavior among the three groups; however, trends in smoking behavior in the desired direction were observed. There is no significant difference in smoking behavior between boys and girls. In this respect the sexes have reached equality, that is, girls are initiating cigarette smoking as frequently as are boys. Finally, there were no significant changes in assertion among the groups. It is concluded that the utility of assertiveness training for young adolescents is questionable.     

Distinguishing lexical- versus discourse-level processing using event-related potentials

Two experiments examine the links between neural patterns in EEG (e.g., N400s, P600s) and their corresponding cognitive processes (e.g., lexical access, discourse integration) by varying the lexical and syntactic contexts of co-referential expressions. Experiment 1 examined coreferring expressions when they occurred within the same clause as their antecedents (John/Bill warmly dressed John). Experiment 2 examined between-clause co-referencing with expressions that also varied in lexical frequency (John/Weston went to the store so that John/Weston could buy milk). Evidence of facilitated lexical processing occurred after repeated names, which elicited smaller N400s, as compared with new names. N400s were also attenuated to a greater degree for low-frequency expressions than for high-frequency ones. Repeated names also triggered evidence of postlexical processing, but this emerged as larger P600s for within-clause co-referencing and delayed N400s for between-clause co-referencing. Together, these results suggest that linguistic processes can be distinguished through distinct ERP components or distinct temporal patterns.     

Effects of short‐term cosmetic versus long‐term health fear appeals in anti‐smoking advertisements on the smoking behaviour of adolescents

A field study exposed 235 high school students to anti‐smoking advertisements over a five‐month period to test the effectiveness of short‐term cosmetic versus long‐term health fear appeals in preventing or reducing smoking. The study was a longitudinal experiment with two experimental groups and a control group. Smoking behaviour was measured prior to message exposure on television, in magazines and on the internet, and at the end of the study period. The primary results were that average smoking declined for subjects exposed to either type of anti‐smoking fear appeal but not for the control group and short‐term cosmetic fear appeals were more effective for males but long‐term health fear appeals were more effective for females. Copyright © 2003 Henry Stewart Publications.     

Showups versus lineups: An evaluation using ROC analysis

Showups (a one-person identification) were compared to both simultaneous and sequential lineups that varied in lineup fairness and the position of the suspect in the lineup. We reanalyzed data from a study by Gronlund, Carlson, Dailey, and Goodsell (2009), which included simultaneous and sequential lineups, and using the same stimuli and procedures, collected new data using showup identifications. Performance was compared using ROC analysis, which is superior to traditional measures such as correct and false identification rates, and probative value measures. ROC analysis showed that simultaneous lineups consistently produced more accurate identification evidence than showups, but sequential lineups were sometimes no more accurate than showups, and were never more accurate than simultaneous lineups. These results supported prior suppositions regarding the suggestiveness of showups, revealed a misconception about the superiority of sequential lineups, and demonstrated why eyewitness identification procedures need to be evaluated using ROC analyses.     

Forward inference using functional neuroimaging: dissociations versus associations

Many people are excited by functional neuroimaging as a new tool for cognitive science; many others are sceptical. In this opinion article, I describe a 'forward inference' that one can make from patterns of brain activity to distinguish between cognitive theories. I give an example of forward inferences in research on recognition memory, and outline some statistical criteria for a 'qualitative difference' in brain activity. Forward inferences resemble the dissociation logic long-used in behavioural studies of healthy and brain-damaged people, although I argue that dissociations in neuroimaging data can go beyond behavioural dissociations. Nonetheless, forward inferences are only as good as the cognitive theories to which they pertain, and are most valuable in conjunction with other types of inference.     

Rapid-response versus free-time selection tasks using different logical connectives

When reasoning with conditional statements (i.e., if [not] p then [not] q), people tend to display matching bias: Options that match the entities named in the rule are selected even when logically inappropriate. Three different Wason selection tasks were administered under free-time and rapid-response formats. For the latter, individual cards were presented for one second, and required a response within a further one second. Previous research using these formats (Roberts & Newton, 2001) has shown that this increases matching bias, in line with the action of preconscious heuristic processes which direct attention towards relevant aspects of a problem, but whose action can be overturned if there is sufficient time to apply analytic reasoning processes. The selection tasks administered included a standard abstract conditional task, a disjunctive version (i.e., either [not] p or [not] q), and a conditional task in which the cards showed explicitly negated values. Both conditional tasks demonstrated matching bias, but under rapid-response presentation, matching bias only increased for the standard conditional and disjunctive tasks. Overall, the data support Evans’ (e.g., 2006) heuristic-analytic framework albeit with some caveats, and it is suggested that the broad question, of whether individual selection task formats show or do not show matching bias, requires more detailed investigation.     

Assessing the feasibility of using contingency management to modify cigarette smoking by adolescents

Cigarette smoking is a leading cause of preventable death in the United States. Many smokers initiate this dangerous behavior during adolescence. This report describes a contingency management intervention designed to initate and maintain a period of abstinence from cigarettes by adolescent smokers. Results suggest that the intervention was generally successful and that further investigation of this topic is warranted.     

Predictors of smoking cessation in Taiwan: using the theory of planned behavior

This study aimed to explore the factors predicting the intention to quit smoking and the subsequent behavior 6 months later using the theory of planned behavior (TPB). Data were obtained from 145 smokers who attended a smoking cessation clinic in a community hospital. All participants completed a questionnaire which included demographic information, TPB-based items, perceived susceptibility and previous attempts to quit. The actual quitting behavior was obtained by follow-up phone calls 6 months later. The TPB constructs explained 34% of the variance in intention to quit smoking. By adding perceived susceptibility, the explained variance was significantly improved to 40%. The most important predictors were perceived behavior control and perceived susceptibility, followed by attitude. Subjective norm did not contribute to the prediction of intention. Attitude and perceived behavior control contributed to the prediction of actual quitting behavior, but intention, subjective norm and perceived susceptibility did not. Our findings support that the TPB is generally a useful framework to predict the intention to quit smoking in Taiwan. The inclusion of perceived susceptibility improved the prediction of intention. With regards to successfully quitting, attitude and perceived behavior control played more crucial roles than other TPB constructs. Smoking cessation promotion initiatives focusing on reinforcing cessation belief, enhancing a smoker’s perception of their capability to quit smoking, and persuading smokers that they can overcome cessation barriers to cessation could make subsequent interventions more effective.     

Assessment of successful smoking cessation by psychological factors using the Bayesian network approach

The association between psychological factors and smoking cessation is complicated and inconsistent in published researches, and the joint effect of psychological factors on smoking cessation is unclear. This study explored how psychological factors jointly affect the success of smoking cessation using a Bayesian network approach. A community-based case control study was designed with 642 adult male successful smoking quitters as the cases, and 700 adult male failed smoking quitters as the controls. General self-efficacy (GSE), trait coping style (positive-trait coping style (PTCS) and negative-trait coping style (NTCS)) and self-rating anxiety (SA) were evaluated by GSE Scale, Trait Coping Style Questionnaire and SA Scale, respectively. Bayesian network was applied to evaluate the relationship between psychological factors and successful smoking cessation. The local conditional probability table of smoking cessation indicated that different joint conditions of psychological factors led to different outcomes for smoking cessation. Among smokers with high PTCS, high NTCS and low SA, only 36.40% successfully quitted smoking. However, among smokers with low pack-years of smoking, high GSE, high PTCS and high SA, 63.64% successfully quitted smoking. Our study indicates psychological factors jointly influence smoking cessation outcome. According to different joint situations, different solutions should be developed to control tobacco in practical intervention.