Impairments of Neurocognitive Performance in the Smoking Behavior

The increasing prevalence of smoking, despite the awareness of its potential damages, may be due to various causes. Impairments of the neurocognitive functions have been identified in a variety of addictive behaviors. Accordingly, the aim of the present study was to investigate neurocognitive performance relative defects in smoking people compared to the non-smoking subjects. 

This investigation is a causal-comparative study. The sample of 50 subjects (aged 21-32 years), 25 male smoker student and 25 non-smokers were chosen through convenience sampling from the University of Guilan. These subjects answered researcher-made cigarette checklist and worked with software tests of Cambridge Gambling, Stroop’s Color-Word, and Tower of London, for evaluation risky decision making, response inhibition, and planning and problem solving. 

The results of multivariate analysis of variance showed that two groups of smoker and non-smoker people have shown different results of software tests of Cambridge Gambling, Stroop’s Color-Word, and Tower of London. 

The findings of this study indicate that smokers have a poor relative performance in risky decision-making, response inhibition, and planning and problem-solving. These neurocognitive performance relative defects may explain their smoking behavior despite the awareness of potential damages of smoking.