title: Thinking about craving: an experimental analysis of smokers' spontaneous self-reports of craving.
abstract: This study evaluated whether smokers generate spontaneous expressions of craving (i.e., expressions of an urge, craving, desire, want, or need) in response to cues designed to provoke a craving state. In a 2 (smoking deprivation: 1 and 12 h) x 2 (cue type: neutral, active) within-subjects design, smokers were asked to think aloud in an unstructured way (i.e., "describe everything you are thinking and feeling right now"). Results revealed a main effect for cue type on think-aloud craving responses: Smokers spontaneously generated a greater number of craving-related cognitions during active cue exposure compared with neutral cue exposure, both during both 1- and 12-h deprivation. This same pattern of effects was not found for a self-report assessment of craving, which was insensitive to cue-provoked changes in craving in the 1-h deprivation condition. These results suggest that smokers do spontaneously experience craving, independent of an explicit assessment of craving and that think-aloud methods may provide a novel assessment of craving that may be relatively more sensitive than self-report methods under some circumstances.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, University of Pittsburgh, 130 North Bellefield Avenue, 5th floor, Pittsburgh, PA 15260, USA. wgs1@pitt.edu
authors.forename: William G
authors.initials: WG
authors.lastname: Shadel
authors.forename: Raymond
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Niaura
authors.forename: David B
authors.initials: DB
authors.lastname: Abrams
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D000339:Affect; D000704:Analysis of Variance; D003071:Cognition; D003463:Cues; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D009042:Motivation; D012647:Self-Assessment; D012907:Smoking / Q000523:psychology*; D013850:Thinking; D014029:Tobacco Use Disorder / Q000523:psychology*