Eye movements to smoking-related pictures in smokers: relationship between attentional biases and implicit and explicit measures of stimulus valence.

AIMS To investigate biases in overt orienting of attention to smoking-related cues in cigarette smokers, and to examine the relationship between measures of visual orienting and the affective and motivational valence of smoking cues. DESIGN Smokers and non-smokers took part in a single session in which their attentional and evaluative responses to smoking-related and matched control pictures were recorded. PARTICIPANTS Twenty smokers and 25 non-smokers. MEASUREMENTS Direction and duration of gaze was measured while participants completed a visual probe task. Subjective and cognitive-experimental measures of the motivational and affective valence of the stimuli were recorded. FINDINGS Smokers, but not non-smokers, maintained their gaze for longer on smoking-related pictures than control pictures. They were also faster to detect probes that replaced smoking-related than control pictures, consistent with an attentional bias for smoking-related cues. Furthermore, smokers showed greater preferences for smoking-related than control pictures, compared with non-smokers, on both the subjective (explicit) and cognitive-experimental (implicit) indices of stimulus valence. Within smokers, longer initial fixations of gaze on smoking-related pictures were associated with a bias to rate the smoking pictures more positively, with greater approach tendencies for smoking pictures on the cognitive-experimental task, and with a greater urge to smoke. CONCLUSIONS These results demonstrate that smokers show biased attentional orientating to smoking cues, which is related to craving and the affective and motivational valence of the stimuli.