1. Psychologist George Spilich and colleagues at Washington College in Chestertown, Maryland, decided to find out whether, as many smoker say, smoking helps them "think and concentrate." Spilich put young non-smokers, active smokers and smokers deprived(被剥夺)of cigarettes through a series of tests.
2. In the first test, each subject(试验对象)sat before a computer screen and pressed a key as soon as he or she recognized a target letter among a grouping of 96. In this simple test, smokers, deprived smokers and non-smokers performed equally well.
3. The next test was more complex, requiring all to see sequences of 20 identical letters and respond the instant one of the letters transformed into a different one. Nonsmokers were faster, but under the stimulation of nicotine(尼古丁), active smokers were faster than deprived smokers.
4. In the third test of short-term memory, non-smokers made the fewest errors, but deprived smokers committed fewer errors than active smokers.
5. The fourth test required people to read a passage, then answer questions about it, Non-smokers remembered 19 percent more of the most important information than active smokers, and deprived smokers bested those who had smoked a cigarette just before testing. Active smokers tended not only to have poorer memories but also had trouble separating important information from insignificant details.
6. "As our tests became more complex." Sums up Spilich, "non--smokers performed better than smokers by wider and wider margins." He predicts, "smokers might perform adequately at many jobs--until they got complicated. A smoking airline pilot could fly adequately if no problems arose, but if something went wrong, smoking might damage his mental capacity."