Tobacco smoking, personality and sex factors in auditory vigilance performance

A total of 120 university students comprising equal groups of male and female non-smokers, smokers not smoking and smokers smoking; were compared for performance on a 60 min auditory vigilance task. Non-smokers consistently detected more signals throughout the test. A significant interaction showed that while non-smokers detected fewer signals as the test progressed, smokers increased their number of detections. There were no sex differences and no overall EPI differences in scores, although extraverted non-smokers gave significantly higher scores than introverted non-smokers with the converse being present for smokers. The results are discussed in relation to hippocampal functions and indicate that smoking should be taken into account in experiments involving sustained attention.