Impairments of Neurocognitive Performance in the Smoking Behavior

Introduction: 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. Materials and Methods: 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. Results: 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. Conclusion: 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.