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Crushing cigarettes in a virtual reality environment might give smokers a leg up on their addiction, according to a new study published in the journal CyberPyschology and Behavior.
Researchers from Canada's GRAP Occupational Psychology Clinic and the University of Quebec in Gatineau took 91 smokers, divided them into two groups and enrolled them in a 12-week anti-smoking support program.
Each group also played a specially designed video game four times a week. After entering a computer-generated virtual environment, participants in the experimental group chased down floating cigarettes and crushed them. The control group crushed floating balls.
"In the past 10 years, our clinic has seen over 4,000 smokers, with a rate of success of around 50 percent with traditional methods to stop smoking," GRAP virtual reality specialist Vincent Turcotte told Discovery News. "We wanted to find a way to help the other 50 percent of smokers who didn't quit. The idea of virtual reality came as a probable good way to block the smokers' conditional reflexes, like bringing the hand to the mouth to smoke."
The study's findings showed significant reduction in nicotine cravings among smokers in the cigarette-crushing group. At week 12, 15 percent of the cigarette crushers had abstained from smoking, compared to 2 percent among the control group.
During a six-month follow-up, 20 percent of participants in the control group reported not smoking during the previous week. That rate reached 39 percent among the experimental group.
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