Abstract
Pain-related stimuli can capture attention in an automatic (bottom–up) or intentional (top–down) fashion. Previous studies have examined attentional capture by pain-related information using spatial attention paradigms that involve mainly a bottom–up mechanism. In the current study, we investigated the pain information-induced attentional blink (AB) using a rapid serial visual presentation (RSVP) task, and compared the effects of task-irrelevant and task-relevant pain distractors. Relationships between accuracy of target identification and individual traits (i.e., empathy and catastrophizing thinking about pain) were also examined. The results demonstrated that task-relevant painful faces had a significant pain information-induced AB effect, whereas task-irrelevant faces showed a near-significant trend of this effect, supporting the notion that pain-related stimuli can influence the temporal dynamics of attention. Furthermore, we found a significant negative correlation between response accuracy and pain catastrophizing score in task-relevant trials. These findings suggest that active scanning of environmental information related to pain produces greater deficits in cognition than does unintentional attention toward pain, which may represent the different ways in which healthy individuals and patients with chronic pain process pain-relevant information. These results may provide insight into the understanding of maladaptive attentional processing in patients with chronic pain.
Highlights
As an alarm signal of bodily threat, pain has an inherently stronger ability than other stimuli to draw attention and interrupt ongoing goals (Eccleston and Crombez, 1999; Legrain et al, 2009; Van Damme et al, 2010; Schoth et al, 2012)
The current study demonstrated that task-relevant painful faces had a significantly stronger attentional blink (AB) effect than did neutral faces, and task-irrelevant faces showed a nearsignificant trend of this effect
This study examined the attention-capturing effects of painful facial expressions using task-relevant and task-irrelevant AB paradigms
Summary
As an alarm signal of bodily threat, pain has an inherently stronger ability than other stimuli to draw attention and interrupt ongoing goals (Eccleston and Crombez, 1999; Legrain et al, 2009; Van Damme et al, 2010; Schoth et al, 2012). These studies have examined attentional bias toward pain-related stimuli based on the spatial distribution of attention. Available evidence supporting pain-related attentional bias comes largely from patients with chronic pain; this bias is rarely found in healthy subjects (Crombez et al, 2013)
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