Nicotine reduces distraction under low perceptual load
Nicotine reduces distraction under low perceptual load
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DOI：
10.1007/s00213-014-3761-5
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发表时间：
2015-04-01
影响因子：
3.4
通讯作者：
Thiel, Christiane M.
中科院分区：
文献类型：
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作者：
Behler, Oliver;Breckel, Thomas P. K.;Thiel, Christiane M.
一些研究提供证据表明，尼古丁减轻了分散注意力的感官刺激的有害影响。有人认为，尼古丁可能起到刺激过滤器的作用，阻止不相关的刺激进入意识，或者通过提高处理能力来增强对相关刺激的注意力。为了区分这两种说法，我们对健康的非吸烟者施用尼古丁，并研究了低感知负荷和高感知负荷对处理能力的视觉搜索任务中的干扰。在受试者设计的双盲实验中，30名健康的非吸烟者在使用不同的注视干扰物执行视觉搜索任务前1小时接受了7毫克透皮尼古丁或匹配的安慰剂。尼古丁减少了不一致干扰物的干扰，但仅在低负荷条件下，干扰物的影响很大。在高负荷条件下，没有观察到尼古丁的影响。高度易分心的受试者受到尼古丁的影响最大。研究结果表明，尼古丁主要是作为一种刺激过滤器，在高度干扰的情况下阻止无关的刺激进入意识。
Several studies provide evidence that nicotine alleviates the detrimental effects of distracting sensory stimuli. It is been suggested that nicotine may either act as a stimulus filter that prevents irrelevant stimuli entering awareness or by enhancing the attentional focus to relevant stimuli via a boost in processing capacity.To differentiate between these two accounts, we administered nicotine to healthy non-smokers and investigated distractor interference in a visual search task with low and high perceptual load to tax processing capacity.Thirty healthy non-smokers received either 7 mg transdermal nicotine or a matched placebo in a double blind within subject design 1 h prior to performing the visual search task with different fixation distractors.Nicotine reduced interference of incongruent distractors, but only under low-load conditions, where distractor effects were large. No effects of nicotine were observed under high-load conditions. Highly distractible subjects showed the largest effects of nicotine.The findings suggest that nicotine acts primarily as a stimulus filter that prevents irrelevant stimuli from entering awareness in situations of high distractor interference.