Adolescent Susceptibility to Tobacco: A Panel Analysis
Creators: name: University Of California Office Of The President
Publisher: name: University of California Office of the President
publisherIdentifier: https://ror.org/00dmfq477
publisherIdentifierScheme: ROR
Year: 2024

description: The major objective of this project is to model the influences of situational/contextual and trait factors on the smoking behavior of adolescents in everyday settings as well as to study the contribution of individual differences in nicotine-dependence susceptibility to patterns of adolescent cigarette smoking. Over 90% of smokers begin smoking before the age of 18, yet very little is known concerning what it is that makes adolescents vulnerable to the initiation of smoking and susceptible to tobacco dependence. For example, there is evidence that nicotine reduces aggressive behavior in animal models, but little is known regarding nicotine's effects on anger and aggression in humans. Interestingly, whether the putative anger-palliative effects of nicotine may represent a particularly salient mechanism reinforcing tobacco use among high-hostile individuals has not been studied. The goals of this project are directly related to the TRDRP's research priority to fund work that will further our understanding of the factors that contribute to the development, maintenance, and relapse of cigarette smoking. The proposal is also responsive to the goal of the IRP in its emphasis on youth.
 
 
 
 
 
 One hundred and eighty adolescents entering the 9th grade (40- never-smokers, 70-experimental and 70- regular smokers) will be signaled to fill out diaries an average of twice an hour, indicating their location and activities, the social context (such as presence of other people), whether they smoked, and consumption of food and other substances. They also will be asked to report on their moods and their degree of hunger and urge to smoke. Analysis of salivary cotinine, collected at the end of each monitoring day, will be used to validate diary reports of cigarette smoking. The self-monitoring will be done for a period of two school and two weekend days. This 4-day sequence will be repeated four times over two years: i) fall 1998; ii) spring 1999; iii) fall 1999; and iv) spring 2000.
 
 
 
 
 
 Analyses will model the stimuli and cues associated with smoking behavior and urges, as well as to examine the effects of cigarette smoking on the subjective, behavioral, and psychophysiological responses of adolescents in natural settings. We also will determine the role of trait characteristics (e.g., hostility) and gender in the above relationships. In addition, heart rate activity will be recorded continuously to determine its role as a discriminative stimulus for smoking as well as to provide an index of the physiological response to cigarette smoking. The results of this project will provide important information related to the role of trait characteristics and situational factors in the susceptibility to initiation and maintenance of smoking in adolescents.
 
 
 
 
 
 This Project, with its focus on modeling factors contributing to adolescent smoking patterns at the level of the individual (made possible by the large number of observations obtained on each subject), is designed to provide data that will be useful in explicating relationships observed in the large-scale epidemiological study (Project 2) which is designed to evaluate the interactions between trait characteristics and biopsychosocial stress indicators in determining who becomes an adolescent smoker. Together, this Project and Project 2 will aid us in designing more effective primary prevention (Project 1), as well as intervention programs that are targeted specifically for youth. Both Projects 2 and 3 focus on the importance of innate or trait factors in determining the susceptibility to tobacco-dependence. This theme is carried forward in Project 4 which is designed to address the issue of innate susceptibility to nicotine at the cellular and receptor level. Thus taken as a whole, the proposed IRP will provide new and important information related to: what makes adolescents susceptible to initiation of tobacco use and how to better account for individual differences in vulnerability (Projects 2, 3); the behavioral and psychological effects of nicotine that makes it attractive to adolescents (Project 3); the role of genetic (Project 4) and biosocial factors (Project 2) in susceptibility to nicotine dependence; and the development and implementation of effective prevention programs for adolescent populations (Projects 1, 5).