Adolescent Attentional Bias toward Real-world Flavored E-cigarette Marketing

E-cigarettes are now the most commonly-used tobacco product among adolescents; yet, little work has examined how the appealing food and flavor cues used in their marketing might attract adolescents' attention, thereby increasing willingness to try these products. In the present study, we tested whether advertisements for fruit/sweet/savory-flavored ("flavored") e-cigarettes attracted adolescent attention in real-world scenes more than tobacco flavored ("unflavored") e-cigarettes. Additionally, we examined the relationship between adolescent attentional bias and willingness to try flavored e-cigarettes.

Participants were 46 adolescents (age range: 16-18 years). All participants took part in an eye-tracking paradigm that examined attentional bias to flavored and unflavored e-cigarette advertisements embedded in pictures of real-world storefront scenes. Afterwards, participants' willingness to try flavored and unflavored e-cigarettes was assessed.

In support of our primary hypothesis, adolescents looked longer and fixated more frequently on flavored (vs unflavored) e-cigarette advertisements. Moreover, this attentional bias towards flavored e-cigarette advertisements predicted a greater willingness to try flavored vs unflavored e-cigarettes.

These findings suggest that flavored e-cigarette marketing attracts the attention of adolescents, in- creases their willingness to try flavored e-cigarette products, and could, therefore, put them at greater risk for tobacco initiation.