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Updated: Dec 12, 2025
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Published on: June 18, 2018
A Meta-Analysis of Cue Reactivity in Tobacco Cigarette Smokers
Jennifer M Betts1, Ashley N Dowd1, Mia Forney1
1Department of Psychology, University at Buffalo, State University of New York, Buffalo, NY.
Introduction:
The cue reactivity paradigm allows for systematic evaluation of motivational responses to drug-related cues that may elicit drug use. The literature on this topic has grown substantially in recent decades, and the methodology used to study cue reactivity has varied widely across studies. The present research provided a meta-analytic investigation of variables that have an impact on cue reactivity effects to enhance our understanding of this key feature of tobacco use disorders.
Methods:
A total of 128 publications yielded 249 effect sizes, which were analyzed to investigate the magnitude of the cue reactivity effect and potential moderators.
Results:
Craving generated a moderate-to-large effect size (Hedges' g = 0.71, p < .001), indicating that drug cues produced significantly greater craving than neutral cues. However, physiological variables yielded significantly lower or nonsignificant effect sizes. Analyses of a variety of empirically and theoretically relevant moderator variables showed that cue modality, cue personalization, cue reactivity environment, and the use of multiple assessments of cue reactivity were significantly associated with the magnitude of cue-specific craving effects (ps < .001). Effect sizes were not significantly related to abstinence status, gender, cigarettes per day, and treatment-seeking status.
Conclusions:
The results underscored the strength of self-reported craving as an index of cue reactivity across studies, which support theories that posit cue reactivity is core to the addictive process for daily tobacco cigarette smokers. The present research further elucidates the variables that alter the cue reactivity effects across studies and provides recommendations for future cue reactivity research.
Implications:
A core feature of addiction is that drug-related cues can have a major impact on motivational responses across multiple substance use disorders, including tobacco cigarettes. This paper describes a meta-analysis updating and synthesizing cue reactivity research with tobacco cigarette smokers over the last 20 years, a time of rapid growth for this literature. The study leads to a better understanding of the cue reactivity paradigm across different self-report and physiological variables and identifies factors that may modulate addictive motivation for tobacco cigarettes.
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