| Popis: |
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 between-groups differences on measurements of depression and anxiety. Conclusions. The results suggest that although mood levels are normal for a non-clinical 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. |
Plný text