SUBSTANCE USE AND MEMORY FOR HEALTH WARNING LABELS

This article reports the relationship between substance use and memory for health warnings for cigarettes, smokeless tobacco, and alcohol. M easures of substance use and recognition memory for warning labels wer e collected from 2 samples of college students (n = 288 and n = 243). It was hypothesized that if health warnings were noticed and remembere d, then users, because they were often exposed to the warning labels, would have more accurate memory for the risks written on the container s of these products than nonusers. Prior research had not confirmed th is relationship. In Study 1, a statistically significant correlation w as obtained between use and recognition memory for both cigarettes and smokeless tobacco. The effects for cigarettes and smokeless tobacco w ere replicated in Study 2 and observed for alcohol as well.