Time-based prospective memory impairment in adults who smoke: the role of internal and external attention and cue-based intervention.

RATIONALE: Long term smoking can cause sustained damage to time-based prospective memory (TBPM). However, the specific processing mechanism of smoking induced TBPM damage is not yet clear, and there is a lack of effective intervention measures.

OBJECTIVES

This study systematically explores the mechanism of smoking's impact on TBPM from attention perspective and suggests its improvement effect

METHODS

The experiment adopted a dual task paradigm, randomly dividing 76 adults who smoke (with a smoking history of 2-5 years and smoking more than 10 cigarettes per day) into a smoking non-reminder group and a smoking reminder group, and recruiting 32 non-smokers as a non-smoking group.

RESULTS

The results showed that the accuracy of TBPM in the smoking non-reminder group was significantly lower than that in both the smoking reminder group and the non-smoking group, and was also accompanied by lower time‑monitoring effectiveness. The smoking non-reminder group had the highest frequency of time checking, followed by the non-smoking group, and the smoking reminder group had the lowest.

CONCLUSIONS

These findings suggest that adults who smoke present a dual deficit characterized by insufficient internal attention and reduced external attention effectiveness. However, reminders can effectively improve the TBPM performance of adults who smoke by reducing the demands of internal attention.