The relation between children's attention bias to pain and children's pain-related memory biases is moderated by parental narrative style

Abstract

Children's heightened attention to pain and parental narrative style have been linked to the development of negatively-biased pain memories in children (i.e., recalling higher levels of pain and fear than initially reported, which robustly predicts maladaptive pain outcomes). However, the interplay between child attention bias and parental narrative style remains to be assessed. This study aims to fill this gap using enhanced paradigms assessing children's cognitive biases for cues signaling actual pain. Healthy school children (N = 63; 9–15 years old) received painful heat stimuli while performing a spatial cueing task measuring attention bias to cues signaling actual pain. Parent-child interaction upon completion of the painful task, was coded for parental narrative style (i.e., elaboration, repetition and evaluation). Children's pain-related memories were elicited two weeks later. Findings indicated that children showed an attention bias to cues signaling pain. Furthermore, children who were hypervigilant to pain cues benefitted from parents elaborating more about the pain experience, while children who avoided pain cues developed more negatively-biased pain memories if parents had a more elaborative style compared to a more evaluative parental style. In conclusion, this study suggests that optimal ways to talk about children's pain depend upon child characteristics (i.e., children's attention bias to pain).