Hypervigilance and Attentional Fixedness in Chronic Musculoskeletal Pain: Consistency of Findings Across Modified Stroop and Dot-probe Tasks

Asmundson, Gordon J.G.; Wright, Kristi D.; Hadjistavropoulos, Heather D.

doi:10.1016/j.jpain.2005.02.012

Cited by 78 publications

(95 citation statements)

References 41 publications

(41 reference statements)

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“…There were 23 studies with the dot-probe task, comprising of 34 independent groups (15 control groups, 19 pain groups; 92 conditions), and there were 6 studies with the modified spatial cueing task, comprising of 8 independent groups (2 control groups, 6 pain groups; 10 conditions). There was one study [10] that reported the results of the modified Stroop task and the dot-probe task from the same participants. Of the 50 studies, 12 were withinsubject designs and 38 were within-and between-subject designs.…”

Section: Descriptive Statistics and Methodological Qualitymentioning

confidence: 99%

“…There are only two independent studies [10,138] with a total of 69 chronic pain patients, and four independent studies [10,67,80,138] In contrast with the modified Stroop task, the dot-probe paradigm and the modified spatial cueing paradigm allowed for a more detailed investigation of the time course of attentional bias when pain-related information was presented supraliminally.…”

Section: Does Attentional Bias To Pain-related Information Differ As mentioning

confidence: 99%

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Attentional bias to pain-related information: A meta-analysis

Crombez¹,

Ryckeghem²,

Eccleston³

et al. 2013

Pain

284

359

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This meta-analysis investigated whether attentional bias, i.e. the preferential allocation of attention to information that is related to pain, is a ubiquitous phenomenon. We also investigated whether attentional bias effects are related to the methodological quality of the study, to procedural differences in their measurement, or to individual differences in pain severity, pain-related fear, anxiety and depression. Results indicated that individuals who experience chronic pain (n=1023) display an attentional bias towards pain-related words or pictures, but this bias was of a small effect size (d=0.134), and did not differ from that in control groups (d=0.082; n=1398). No evidence was found for an attentional bias towards pain-related words and pictures for acute pain (d=0.049), procedural pain (d=0.142), and experimental pain (d=0.069). However, research in which attentional bias towards signals of impending experimental pain in healthy volunteers was investigated, revealed an attentional bias of medium effect size (d=0.676). Moderator analyses in the chronic pain group identified important procedural variables that affected the presence and magnitude of an attentional bias towards pain-related words and pictures, i.e. type INTRODUCTIONAttending toward, dwelling upon, and switching away from pain, have emerged as core components of many cognitive-affective models that seek to explain pain, distress and disability [45,77,154]. Particularly influential is the idea that patients selectively attend to pain at the cost of other information in the environment. This idea has been variably discussed as somatosensory amplification [12,98], hypervigilance [23,35], and more recently as attentional bias [81,120,129,135].The concept of attentional bias was originally introduced by information processing accounts of psychopathology [13,47,92,103]. Attentional bias, or preferentially attending to information that is related to the content of the emotional concerns of patients, has proven to be a robust phenomenon in many forms of psychopathology [21,25,50,117,165]. For example, patients with phobic and anxiety disorders display an attentional bias to threat-related words or pictures [11]. In many of these models biased information processing is not considered epiphenomenal, but instead is invoked as a predisposing, initiating, exacerbating, or maintaining feature of the disorder [11,58,93]. Although much research is correlational, some longitudinal and interventional studies support these accounts [58].Attentional bias to pain-related information is also the subject of significant research activity in pain [4,9,81,120,154,157]. Pain researchers have typically adopted hypotheses and paradigms from psychopathology research. In the first study on this topic, Pearce and Morley (1989) adapted the modified Stroop task, and presented pain patients with cards containing colored words [116]. They instructed participants to name the color of the words while ignoring word meaning. In comparison with control subjects, patients ...

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Section: Descriptive Statistics and Methodological Qualitymentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Does Attentional Bias To Pain-related Information Differ As mentioning

confidence: 99%

Attentional bias to pain-related information: A meta-analysis

Crombez¹,

Ryckeghem²,

Eccleston³

et al. 2013

Pain

284

359

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…The shorter exposure duration was chosen to eliminate multiple saccades and more likely reflect the influence of automatic shifts in attention; whereas, longer exposures were chosen to capture elaborative and strategic components of attention and emotional processing. Affective and sensory pain-related words were chosen based on previous evidence demonstrating their activation of fear and avoidance in FM and chronic pain (Vlaeyen and Linton 2000;de Gier et al 2003;Asmundson et al 2005b). These manipulations were also thought to guard against inconsistencies in prior research using the dot-probe task.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Selective Attentional Bias Towards Pain-Related Threat in Fibromyalgia: Preliminary Evidence for Effects of Mindfulness Meditation Training

Vago

Nakamura

2011

Cogn Ther Res

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The current study investigated the effects of an 8-week mindfulness-based meditation training (MMT) intervention on attentional bias, engagement and disengagement of pain-related threat in fibromyalgia patients as compared to an age-matched control group. A well validated dot-probe task was used to explore early versus later stages of attentional processing through the use of two stimulus exposure durations (100, 500 ms) of pain-related threat words. The enduring effects of MMT were assessed 6-months after completion of MMT. Preliminary results suggest that MMT reduces avoidance of pain-related threat at early levels of processing, and facilitates disengagement from threat at later stages of processing. Furthermore, it appears that effects of MMT on early attentional threat processing do not remain stable after long-term follow-up.

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“…Overestimation in remembering pain can increase sensitivity to subsequent pain experiences, contribute to the development of chronic pain, and affect future health-seeking behaviour (Asmundson, Wright, & Hadjistavropoulos, 2005;Chen, Zeltzer, Craske, & Katz, 2000). Anxiety sensitivity, a trait that has been linked to negative pain experiences in research and clinical settings (Keogh & Birkby, 1999;Keogh & Cochrane, 2002;Lang, Sorrell, Rodgers, & Lebeck, 2006), may play a role in the development of this memory bias.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Reappraisal mitigates overestimation of remembered pain in anxious individuals

Hovasapian

Levine

2015

Cognition and Emotion

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Anxiety sensitivity, a trait characterised by fear of anxiety-related body sensations, has been linked to heightened attention to pain, appraising body sensations as threatening, and remembering threatrelated information. We assessed whether individuals with greater anxiety sensitivity overestimate in remembering pain. We also assessed whether emotion regulation strategies that direct attention away from pain (distraction), or alter appraisals of pain (reappraisal), alleviate memory bias. Participants (N = 137) were randomly assigned to one of two emotion regulation conditions or to a control condition before taking part in a cold pressor task. Greater anxiety sensitivity was associated with overestimation in remembering pain. Engaging in reappraisal mitigated this memory bias but engaging in distraction did not. This is the first study to examine the relations among anxiety sensitivity, emotion regulation and memory for pain. The findings suggest that health-care practitioners can encourage reappraisal to promote more positive memories of procedural pain, particularly in patients high in anxiety sensitivity.

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Hypervigilance and Attentional Fixedness in Chronic Musculoskeletal Pain: Consistency of Findings Across Modified Stroop and Dot-probe Tasks

Cited by 78 publications

References 41 publications

Attentional bias to pain-related information: A meta-analysis

Attentional bias to pain-related information: A meta-analysis

Selective Attentional Bias Towards Pain-Related Threat in Fibromyalgia: Preliminary Evidence for Effects of Mindfulness Meditation Training

Reappraisal mitigates overestimation of remembered pain in anxious individuals

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