Does Vigilance to Pain Make Individuals Experts in Facial Recognition of Pain?

Corinna Baum,Judith Kappesser,Stefan Lautenbacher,Raphaela Schneider

doi:10.1155/2013/371428

Corinna Baum, Judith Kappesser + Show 2 more

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https://doi.org/10.1155/2013/371428

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Abstract

It is well known that individual factors are important in the facial recognition of pain. However, it is unclear whether vigilance to pain as a pain-related attentional mechanism is among these relevant factors. Vigilance to pain may have two different effects on the recognition of facial pain expressions: pain-vigilant individuals may detect pain faces better but overinclude other facial displays, misinterpreting them as expressing pain; or they may be true experts in discriminating between pain and other facial expressions. The present study aimed to test these two hypotheses. Furthermore, pain vigilance was assumed to be a distinct predictor, the impact of which on recognition cannot be completely replaced by related concepts such as pain catastrophizing and fear of pain. Photographs of neutral, happy, angry and pain facial expressions were presented to 40 healthy participants, who were asked to classify them into the appropriate emotion categories and provide a confidence rating for each classification. Additionally, potential predictors of the discrimination performance for pain and anger faces - pain vigilance, pain-related catastrophizing, fear of pain--were assessed using self-report questionnaires. Pain-vigilant participants classified pain faces more accurately and did not misclassify anger as pain faces more frequently. However, vigilance to pain was not related to the confidence of recognition ratings. Pain catastrophizing and fear of pain did not account for the recognition performance. Moderate pain vigilance, as assessed in the present study, appears to be associated with appropriate detection of pain-related cues and not necessarily with the overinclusion of other negative cues.

Highlights

BaCKgRounD: It is well known that individual factors are important in the facial recognition of pain
Pain vigilance is defined as a tendency to attentionally prioritize pain and pain-related stimuli among other stimuli in the external or internal environment [2]; as such, pain vigilance has been demonstrated to be associated with emotional aspects of pain such as pain catastrophizing and fear of pain [3,4]
During the facial recognition task, participants were seated at a distance of 80 cm in front of a personal computer screen (27 cm × 36 cm Flatron F900P Monitor, LG, South Korea), resulting in a visual angle of 6.4° for the height and 7.8° for the width of the photos (9 cm × 11 cm)

Summary

Introduction

BaCKgRounD: It is well known that individual factors are important in the facial recognition of pain. The facial expression of pain by others is a powerful warning because it signals to the observer potentially threatening situations, including an increased likelihood of painful experiences Such a warning cue captures most of the attention of the observers and is difficult to ignore [5,6,7]. It is, plausible to assume that attention is allocated to facial pain expressions, and that the attention of pain-vigilant individuals is captured more than that of nonvigilant individuals. A study by Khatibi et al [3] indicated that chronic pain patients, as potentially hypervigilant individuals, shift their attention selectively to pain facial expressions and that this tendency is more pronounced in pain patients with greater fear of pain

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