Persistence on psychological stressor tasks as a function of smoking cessation treatment outcomes

Recently research has identified lack of persistence on psychological stressor tasks (indexed by individuals' quit time on two laboratory computer-based tasks: the Paced Auditory Serial Addition Task and the Mirror Tracing Persistence Task) as predictors of early substance abuse lapse and subsequent relapse. In the context of a National Cancer Institute-funded clinical trial evaluating group smoking cessation treatment, participants' behavioral tendency to persist on two laboratory psychological stressor tasks prior to treatment and its relationship to their treatment outcome was evaluated prospectively. Inconsistent with prior research, there was no relationship found between persistence on the laboratory stressor tasks and treatment outcome (i.e., attendance, completion, abstinence/lapse rates). Additionally, no significant relationship was found between immediate lapse and full relapse. This lack of findings could be the result of both the use of a relatively homogenous sample as well as the ceiling effects in the distribution of persistence latencies.