Tobacco Use and Lower Accuracy in a Novel Facial Detection Task

The aim of the present study was to investigate the ways in which tobacco addiction affects a person's ability to recognize facial patterns. Facial detection was assessed in 16 individuals with tobacco use disorder and 16 healthy nonsmokers. Facial stimuli were taken from the Ignatian Education...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:Psychology & Neuroscience 2018-12, Vol.11 (4), p.393-403
Main Authors: de Almeida, Natalia Leandro, Fernandes, Thiago Monteiro Paiva, Comfort, William Edgar Machado, dos Santos, Natanael Antonio
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Addiction
Estimation
Face Perception
Female
Human
Male
Pattern Recognition (Cognitive Process)
Statistical Probability
Substance Use Disorder
Test Construction
Tobacco Smoking
Visual Discrimination
Visual Perception
Citations: Items that cite this one
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:The aim of the present study was to investigate the ways in which tobacco addiction affects a person's ability to recognize facial patterns. Facial detection was assessed in 16 individuals with tobacco use disorder and 16 healthy nonsmokers. Facial stimuli were taken from the Ignatian Educational Foundation (FEI) database, from which 12 male and 12 female faces were randomly selected. In the facial detection task, the subjects' task was to detect the location of a face when it was presented with a face/nonface pair on the screen. The order of stimulus presentation was randomized within sessions. Bayesian adaptive estimation was used for stimulus presentation. Presentation times varied between 16.7 and 3,006 ms. Lower response accuracy was associated with worse discrimination. No predictive effects of the cognitive tests on facial detection were found. A person's ability of facial detection can be applied to provide initial descriptions of impairments in the visual processing system. Early stage visual processing is impaired by chronic smoking, and subjects are able to recognize this. Therefore, there is a possibility of reversing this effect and promoting a better prognosis. The present task has biopsychosocial applications and may improve smokers' health by detecting subtle initial changes in visual processing.
ISSN:1984-3054
1983-3288
DOI:10.1037/pne0000144