Citation

Heathcote LC, Vervoort T, Eccleston C, Fox E, Jacobs K, Van Ryckeghem DM, Lau JY. Pain 2015; 156(7): 1334-1341.

Affiliation

1Department of Experimental Psychology, University of Oxford, United Kingdom 2Department of Experimental-Clinical and Health Psychology, Ghent University, Belgium 3Centre for Pain Research, University of Bath, United Kingdom 4Oxford Centre for Children and Young People in Pain (OxCCYP), Nuffield Orthopaedic Centre, United Kingdom 5Department of Psychology, King's College London, United Kingdom.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2015, Lippincott, Williams and Wilkins)

DOI

10.1097/j.pain.0000000000000174

PMID

25830926

Abstract

This study considered the attentional functioning of adolescents with varying levels of pain catastrophizing. Specifically, we investigated the relationship between pain catastrophizing and attention bias to pain facial expressions. Further, drawing on dual process models in the context of pain, we investigated the moderating role of attention control on this relationship. Adolescents (N=73, 16-18 years) performed a dot-probe task in which facial expressions of pain and neutral expressions were presented for 100 ms and 1250 ms. Participants also completed self-report pain catastrophizing and attention control measures. We found that while there was no main effect of pain catastrophizing on attention bias towards pain faces, attention control did significantly moderate this relationship. Further analysis revealed that lower levels of attention control were significantly associated with increasing attentional vigilance towards pain faces only within high catastrophizing adolescents. In addition, we found that poorer attention control was related to increased attention bias for pain faces (regardless of pain catastrophizing level) when these faces were presented for relatively longer durations (i.e., 1250 ms), but not for short durations (i.e., 100 ms). This study supports a dual process model of attentional processes in pain, thus replicating previous findings within the psychopathology literature but extending them to the study of pain. Theoretical and clinical implications of our findings are discussed.

Language: en