From the office to the pub: the role of smoking-relevant contexts and cue-elicited urge to smoke

Abstract

The present study investigates how environmental contexts can affect cue-elicited urge to smoke. A total of 33 smokers were repeatedly presented with a cue predicting smoking and a cue predicting no smoking in one room and the effect of context change in a different room was assessed. Results endorsed earlier findings that a cue predicting smoking availability elicited more urge to smoke than a cue predicting smoking unavailability. Furthermore, this study shows that a context switch from a low smoking-relevant room to a high smoking-relevant room reduces the learned differential urge responding between the two availability cues. These findings are discussed in relation to the role that smoking-relevant contexts play in the generalization of differential urge responding after a context switch. Furthermore, implications for government policies on smoking and clinical issues are discussed.