The vast majority of research investigating the neurocognitive consequences of chronic cigarette smoking is cross-sectional in design and focused primarily on middle-aged and older adults. In the sole study of adolescents, daily smokers (mean age = 17 ± 1) showed deficits in accuracy of working memory relative to NSC, with individuals who began smoking at a younger age demonstrating greater impairment than those who began smoking at a later age [23]. In the few studies with young adults, smokers were inferior to NSC on measures of sustained attention and impulse control [24], auditory-verbal memory, oral arithmetic, and receptive and expressive vocabulary [25], information processing speed [26] and general intelligence [27]. On an experimental behavioral measure of risk-taking (Balloon Analogue Risk Task [28]), young adults smokers demonstrated higher levels of risk-taking [29]. In cross-sectional studies specifically comparing NSC to middle-aged and/or older adult smokers, poorer performance in smokers was reported for auditory-verbal learning and/or memory [30–34], working memory [26,35,36], executive functions [33,37,38], general intellectual abilities [39], visual search speed [40], processing speed and cognitive flexibility [30–32,38,41,42] and global cognitive function (e.g.,
