Testing Augmented Reality for Eliciting Cue-Provoked Urges to Smoke: Toward Moving Cue-Exposure Into the Real World.

This study introduces AR as a novel modality for presenting smoking-related stimuli to provoke cue reactivity, and ultimately to conduct extinction-based therapy. AR cues presented via a smartphone have the advantage over other modes of cue presentation (pictures, virtual reality, in vivo, etc.) of being easily transportable, affordable, and realistic, and they can be inserted in a smokers' natural environment rather than being limited to laboratory and clinic settings. These AR features may overcome the generalizability barriers of other methods, thus increasing clinical utility for cue exposure therapies.