Abstract
BackgroundPain’s disruptive effects on cognition are well documented. The seminal goal-pursuit account of pain suggests that cognitive disruption is less likely if participants are motivated to attended to a focal goal and not a pain goal.ObjectivesExisting theory is unclear about the conceptualisation and operationalisation of ‘focal goal’. This study aims to clarify how goals should be conceptualised and further seeks to test the theory of the goal-pursuit account.MethodsIn a pre-registered laboratory experiment, 56 participants completed an arithmetic task in high-reward/low-reward and pain/control conditions. Pain was induced via cold-water immersion.ResultsHigh levels of reported effort exertion predicted cognitive-task performance, whereas desire for rewards did not. Post-hoc analyses further suggest that additional effort in the pain condition compensated for pain’s disruptive effects, but when this extra effort was not exerted, performance deficits were observed in pain, compared to control, conditions.ConclusionResults suggest that ‘motivation’, or commitment to a focal goal, is best understood as effort exertion and not as a positive desire to achieve a goal. These results solidify existing theory and aid researchers in operationalising these constructs.
Highlights
Pain may detriment attention and working memory [1,2,3], which underlie many important daily activities
The motivation-decision model of pain [8] suggests that pain should be conceptualised as a homeostatic state
A 2 ×2 repeatedmeasures ANOVA was conducted on percentage-accuracy arithmetic scores
Summary
Pain may detriment attention and working memory [1,2,3], which underlie many important daily activities. The goal-pursuit account argues that commitment to a non-pain goal (e.g. performing well on an arithmetic task) might result in prioritising the non-pain-goal information and reducing accessibility to pain-processing information [6,7]. Since individuals have a limited range of behaviours which can be simultaneously engaged, a homeostatic conflict must be resolved by facilitating/inhibiting one of the conflicting drives. These two accounts are compatible and both explain cognitive disruption through motivation-based mechanisms. The seminal goal-pursuit account of pain suggests that cognitive disruption is less likely if participants are motivated to attended to a focal goal and not a pain goal.
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