Active Passive Smoking
Psychologist George Spilich at Washington College in Chestertown, Maryland, decided to find out whether, as many smokers say, smoking helps them to think and concentrate. He put non-smokers, active smokers and smokers deprived of cigarettes through a series of tests. In the first test, each subject sat before a computer screen and pressed a key as soon as he or she recognized a target letter. In this simple test, smokers, deprived smokers and non-smokers performed equally well. The next test was more complex. Non-smokers were faster, but the stimulation of nicotine, active smokers were faster than deprived smokers. In the third test of short-term memory, non-smokers made the fewest errors, but deprived smokers committed fewer errors than active smokers. In the fourth test, non-smokers were the best and deprived smokers bested those who had smoked a cigarette just before testing. As the tests became more complex, non-smokers performed better than smokers by wider margins.