Quitting time seems slower

People who try to quit smoking often feel edgy and have trouble staying focused. Now psychologists have zeroed in on a likely biological explanation: Nicotine withdrawal affects the smoker’s sense of time. When researchers measured time perception in nonsmokers and smokers, they found that both were fairly accurate in their estimates of a 45-second period. However, when the smokers repeated the test after abstaining from cigarettes for 24 hours, their average perception of the same time interval was about twice as long.

On a subconscious level, people process information moment by moment, says lead author Laura Cousino Klein. But if their sense of time is off, they may become impatient.

Things that usually seem to happen quickly can appear to take a frustratingly long time. For example, Klein says, “If you feel it’s taking the person in the car in front of you too long to step on the gas when the light changes from red to green, you may get very angry.”

Klein, an assistant professor of biobehavioral health at Penn State University in University Park, believes that if smokers know to expect this kind of impairment when they quit, they may be better able to cope. She is studying how long this effect of nicotine withdrawal lasts.

The study was published in the winter issue of the Psychopharmacology Bulletin.