Cognitive processing of pain‐related words and psychological adjustment in high and low pain frequency participants

Abstract

Objectives. This study tested the hypotheses that a group of students reporting a high number of pain episodes would present evidence of memory and processing time biases for pain‐related words and that they would be impaired on measures of mood when compared to a low pain frequency group. Design. A quasi‐experimental mixed model design was employed. Group (high pain frequency group, low pain frequency group) was the between‐participants factor, Wordtype (pain‐sensory, pain‐affective, neutral) and encoding condition (self, other‐reference) were the repeated measures. Percentage recall and processing time for each word type were used as dependent measures. Between‐groups comparisons were made for the questionnaire measures. Methods. A computerized word task comprising of pain‐sensory, pain‐affective and neutral words was administered to students. Students were asked to encode the words in a self‐ and other person reference condition followed by a delayed recall phase and the administration of the questionnaires. Results. The recall scores analysis showed that the high pain frequency students recalled significantly more affective words encoded in self‐reference than in the other‐reference. They also recalled significantly more sensory words encoded in self‐reference when compared to the low pain frequency group. The results of the processing time data showed that self‐reference encoding required significantly longer processing time. However, the high pain frequency group processed sensory words encoded in self‐reference significantly faster than neutral or affective words. There were no betweengroups differences on measurements of depression and anxiety. Conclusions. The results suggest that although mood levels are normal for a nonclinical young population experiencing a high number of pain episodes, they show some evidence of pain‐specific cognitive biases previously found in chronic pain patients. Future longitudinal research should assess whether these pain‐specific cognitive biases could be indicators of vulnerability to develop chronic pain in the future.