Effectiveness of Therapeutic Intervention of Retraining of Executive Functions on Cigarette Dependency

Aim: The being of impairments in executive functions could lead to weakness individual control on health behaviors and cigarette consumption. The aim of present research was to investigate effectiveness of comprehensive intervention in order to retraining executive functions in smokers. A randomized controlled trial design with pre-posttest and two monthly follow up was applied. The study population included all smoker men in the summer 2016 in Gorgan city. A number of 60 eligible adult smokers were chosen according to specific inclusion and exclusion criteria of the research and were randomly divided into experimental and control groups. The Fagerstrom questionnaire for assessment of cigarette dependence was administered to two groups people. The experiment group then received 10 sessions (twice weekly) retraining of executive functions (Working Memory and Inhibitory Control), whereas in the control (placebo) group a placebo intervention like the original tasks were performed. The Fagerstrom questionnaire was again performed at post-test and in one month and two month follow up stages in both groups. A repeated measure GLM: Multivariate Analysis of Variance showed significant differences between two groups in Fagerstrom in posttest and two follow up stages. Overall, the retraining executive functions intervention was effective on cigarette dependency and could use from this intervention in cigarette treatment programs.