Effects of nicotine in visual attention tasks

Thirty-five male volunteers (18 nicotine-users and 17 controls) participated in an experiment where a flanker task and a search task were used. It was hypothesized that if nicotine affects selective attention, effects of distracting flanker stimuli should be diminished, and effects of allocation strategies in the search task should be more marked. Nicotine-users performed the tasks after an over-night abstinence, and after administration of oral snuff. In both tasks nicotine users improved more than controls, but there was no indication of nicotine effects on selective attention in either task. Our results point towards a non-specific arousing effect of nicotine.