Working Memory Training on Delay Discounting Among Cigarette Smokers

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Despite widespread awareness of significant negative health consequences, cigarette smoking remains the leading cause of preventable morbidity and mortality in the US (Creamer et al., 2019; Jamal, 2018). Moreover, the highest rate of smoking and heaviest burden of smoking-related illness occurs among low-socioeconomic status (SES) individuals relative to higher SES groups (Businelle et al., 2010; Clegg et al., 2009). Low SES individuals are also 40% less likely to succeed in quitting smoking when they attempt to do so (National Center for Chronic Disease Prevention and Health Promotion (US) Office on Smoking and Health, 2014). One potential explanation for the disparity in rate of smoking and successful quit attempts may be differences in individual rates of delay discounting (DD), i.e., the degree to which rewards loses their value as the delays to their receipt increase (Odum, 2011). A proposed way to reduce steep DD and, potentially, substance use has been computer training for working memory, which has shown favorable results in a sample of individuals with stimulant dependence (Bickel et al., 2011) and substance use broadly (Felton et al., 2019), with the latter even showing decreases in cigarette smoking in a subset of the sample.

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