Adolescent Cigarette Smoking: A Commentary and Issues for Pediatric Psychology

The articles in this special issue reflect the development and maturation of a field of research that has seen rapid growth in the last two decades. From a research area that has become complex and multifaceted, the articles in this special issue were selected to illustrate some important topics that are of particular relevance to pediatric psychology and to point to some opportunities for reducing tobacco use among adolescents. Although the articles address a diverse set of questions, we will try to use them to highlight some themes in the development of adolescent tobacco use 1 research as a field of study. A striking mark of the growing sophistication of research in adolescent smoking is the move from studies that identify simple correlates of smoking to multivariate tests of theory-based, prospective, mediational models, which attempt to capture the processes underlying smoking initiation. Twenty years ago, most studies were restricted to simple, cross-sectional descriptive or demographic correlates of smoking, without consideration of the mediators and processes of smoking risk. In contrast, in this special issue, there are multiple examples of mediational process models. Gerrard, Gibbons, Gano, Vande Lune, and Cleveland focus on dispositional (academic orientation), contextual (neighborhood characteristics), and familial (parental smoking) distal risk factors for smoking initiation. These distal factors combine to affect adolescents’ prototypic representations of a smoker, which in turn impact on their willingness to take a risk in terms of trying a cigarette. This willingness prospectively predicts smoking initiation. Interestingly, this prototype/willingness model of adolescent smoking includes both a path that is based on a reasoned decision (Ajzen & Fishbein, 1973) and a more automatic path