Sigara Kullanımı ve Sigarayla İlişkili İpuçlarının Sanal Hafta Görevindeki İleriye Dönük Bellek Performansına Etkilerinin İncelenmesi: Stratejik İzlemenin, Geriye Dönük Belleğin ve Çalışma Belleğinin Rolü

Abstract

The main purpose of this thesis is to examine how smoking and smoking cues affect performance on prospective memory (PM). Secondary aims are to examine the contribution of strategic monitoring, retrospective memory (RM), and working memory (WM) on PM task performance, to make an adaptation of Virtual Week (VW) (Rendell and Henry, 2009), which is considered as a PM task, to our country’s culture, and to test its functioning on young sample.

For this purpose, VW was applied to a total of 120 young participants, including smokers (60) and non-smokers (60). Participants were assigned randomly a smoking cue (40), unrelated smoking cue (40), and no-cue (40) conditions. VW consists of a training day and 3 virtual days which has totally 30 PM tasks. At the end of each virtual day, the Recognition Test (RT) was applied and participants RM performance were controlled. In addition, WM task (2-back task) was given and the relationship between WM and PM tasks was also examined. 2 (Smoking: Smokers- Non-Smokers) X 3 (Cue Type: Smoking Cue- Unrelated Smoking Cue- No Cue) X 2 (Task Regularity: Regular- Irregular) X 2 (Task Type: Event Based- Time Based) mixed ANOVA design repeated at last two factors was applied. Smoking and cue type were manipulated with between groups and task regularity and task type were manipulated with within subject. RT which was applied after VW, time check task which was a real-time task, and the completion duration of VW were analyzed separately. For this analysis, 2 (Smoking: Smokers and Non-Smokers) X 3 (Cue Type: Smoking Cue, Smoking- Unrelated Smoking Cue - No Cue) mixed ANOVA was carried out. Bonferroni correction was applied for the post-hoc comparisons.

According to the analyzes performed, smokers’ correct response performance on PM was significantly lower than the non-smokers. Also, it was found a positive correlations between WM and PM. However, there was no significant difference between smokers and non-smokers in terms of completing time of VW. In addition, there was no significant difference on smokers’ correct response performance according to cue type.

The results demostrated that, smoking had a negative effect on correct PM response performance but the theory of Cue Reactivity was not supported. In addition, findings of task regularity and task type were supported the Multiprocess Theory of PM and Preparatory Attentional and Memory Processes -PAM- Theory. It has shown that Turkish version of VW in young adults is a reliable measurement tool for evaluating the PM performance.