Wider concepts of partnership working between health professionals and parents, and, needs assessment are important to this study. Crucial elements of the partnership appear to be missing and this coupled with needs assessments that leave parents feeling excluded mean that there are discrepancies between expectations and experiences of parents. These issues require consideration in order to improve services and experiences.
Objectives To test whether children with recurrent abdominal pain (RAP) exhibit subliminal (nonconscious) and supraliminal (conscious) attentional biases to pain-related words, and to determine correlates of these biases. Previous research indicates that individuals attend to disorder-relevant threat words, and in this study, attentional biases to disorder-relevant threat (pain), alternative threat (social threat), and neutral words were compared. Methods Participants were 59 children with RAP who completed a computer-based attentional bias task. Participants and their parents also completed questionnaires measuring pain, somatic complaints, anxiety/ depression, and body vigilance. Results Children with RAP showed attentional biases toward subliminal pain-related words and attentional biases away from supraliminal painrelated words. Participants' attentional biases to social threat-related words were marginally significant and also reflected subliminal attention and supraliminal avoidance. Attentional biases were related to parent and child reports of pain, body vigilance, and anxiety/ depression. Conclusions Children with RAP show nonconscious attention to and conscious avoidance of threat-related words. Their attentional biases relate to individual differences in symptom severity. Implications for models of pediatric pain and future studies are discussed.
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