scholarly journals Interpretation Biases in Pain: Validation of Two New Stimulus Sets

2022 ◽  
Vol 12 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daniel Gaffiero ◽  
Paul Staples ◽  
Vicki Staples ◽  
Frances A. Maratos

Adults with chronic pain interpret ambiguous information in a pain and illness related fashion. However, limitations have been highlighted with traditional experimental paradigms used to measure interpretation biases. Whilst ambiguous scenarios have been developed to measure interpretation biases in adolescents with pain, no scenario sets exist for use with adults. Therefore, the present study: (i) sought to validate a range of ambiguous scenarios suitable for measuring interpretation biases in adults, whilst also allowing for two response formats (forced-choice and free response); and (ii) investigate paradigm efficacy, by assessing the effects of recent pain experiences on task responding. A novel ambiguous scenarios task was administered to adults (N = 241). Participants were presented with 62 ambiguous scenarios comprising 42 that could be interpreted in a pain/pain-illness or non-pain/non-pain illness manner: and 20 control scenarios. Participants generated their own solutions to each scenario (Word Generation Task), then rated how likely they would be to use two researcher-generated solutions to complete each scenario (Likelihood Ratings Task). Participants also rated their subjective experiences of pain in the last 3 months. Tests of reliability, including inter-rater agreement and internal consistency, produced two ambiguous scenario stimulus sets containing 18 and 20 scenarios, respectively. Further analyses revealed adults who reported more recent pain experiences were more likely to endorse the pain/pain-illness solutions in the Likelihood Ratings Task. This study provides two new stimulus sets for use with adults (including control items) in pain research and/or interventions. Results also provide evidence for a negative endorsement bias in adults.

2021 ◽  
Vol 11 ◽  
Author(s):  
Emma Meehan ◽  
Bernie Carter

This article brings together research from the fields of chronic pain management and somatic practices to develop a novel framework of principles to support people living with persistent pain. These include movement-based approaches to awareness of the internal body (interoception), the external environment (exteroception) and movement in space (proprioception). These significantly work with the lived subjective experiences of people living with pain, to become aware of body signals and self-management of symptoms, explore fear and pleasure of movement, and understand how social environments impact on pain. This analysis has potential to create new ways of supporting, understanding and articulating pain experiences, as well as shaping the future of somatic practices for chronic pain.


2020 ◽  
Vol 24 (7) ◽  
pp. 1242-1256
Author(s):  
Frederick H. F. Chan ◽  
Hin Suen ◽  
Janet H. Hsiao ◽  
Antoni B. Chan ◽  
Tom J. Barry

2005 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marisa Nguyen ◽  
Carlos Ugarte ◽  
Ivonne Fuller ◽  
Gregory Haas ◽  
Russell K. Portenoy

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lili Zhang ◽  
Himanshu Vashisht ◽  
Alekhya Nethra ◽  
Brian Slattery ◽  
Tomas Ward

BACKGROUND Chronic pain is a significant world-wide health problem. It has been reported that people with chronic pain experience decision-making impairments, but these findings have been based on conventional lab experiments to date. In such experiments researchers have extensive control of conditions and can more precisely eliminate potential confounds. In contrast, there is much less known regarding how chronic pain impacts decision-making captured via lab-in-the-field experiments. Although such settings can introduce more experimental uncertainty, it is believed that collecting data in more ecologically valid contexts can better characterize the real-world impact of chronic pain. OBJECTIVE We aim to quantify decision-making differences between chronic pain individuals and healthy controls in a lab-in-the-field environment through taking advantage of internet technologies and social media. METHODS A cross-sectional design with independent groups was employed. A convenience sample of 45 participants were recruited through social media - 20 participants who self-reported living with chronic pain, and 25 people with no pain or who were living with pain for less than 6 months acting as controls. All participants completed a self-report questionnaire assessing their pain experiences and a neuropsychological task measuring their decision-making, i.e. the Iowa Gambling Task (IGT) in their web browser at a time and location of their choice without supervision. RESULTS Standard behavioral analysis revealed no differences in learning strategies between the two groups although qualitative differences could be observed in learning curves. However, computational modelling revealed that individuals with chronic pain were quicker to update their behavior relative to healthy controls, which reflected their increased learning rate (95% HDI from 0.66 to 0.99) when fitted with the VPP model. This result was further validated and extended on the ORL model because higher differences (95% HDI from 0.16 to 0.47) between the reward and punishment learning rates were observed when fitted on this model, indicating that chronic pain individuals were more sensitive to rewards. It was also found that they were less persistent in their choices during the IGT compared to controls, a fact reflected by their decreased outcome perseverance (95% HDI from -4.38 to -0.21) when fitted using the ORL model. Moreover, correlation analysis revealed that the estimated parameters had predictive value for the self-reported pain experiences, suggesting that the altered cognitive parameters could be potential candidates for inclusion in chronic pain assessments. CONCLUSIONS We found that individuals with chronic pain were more driven by rewards and less consistent when making decisions in our lab-in-the-field experiment. In this case study, it was demonstrated that compared to standard statistical summaries of behavioral performance, computational approaches offered superior ability to resolve, understand and explain the differences in decision- making behavior in the context of chronic pain outside the lab.


2018 ◽  
Vol 3 ◽  
pp. 104 ◽  
Author(s):  
Zoe V.J. Woodhead ◽  
Holly A. Rutherford ◽  
Dorothy V.M. Bishop

Background: Relative blood flow in the two middle cerebral arteries can be measured using functional transcranial Doppler sonography (fTCD) to give an index of lateralisation as participants perform a specific task. Language laterality has mostly been studied with fTCD using a word generation task, but it is not clear whether this is optimal. Methods: Using fTCD, we evaluated a sentence generation task that has shown good reliability and strong left lateralisation in fMRI. We interleaved trials of word generation, sentence generation and list generation and assessed agreement of these tasks in 31 participants (29 right-handers). Results: Although word generation and sentence generation both gave robust left-lateralisation, Bland-Altman analysis showed that these two methods were not equivalent. The comparison list generation task was not systematically lateralised, but nevertheless laterality indices (LIs) from this task were significantly correlated with the other two tasks. Subtracting list generation LI from sentence generation LI did not affect the strength of the laterality index. Conclusions: This was a pre-registered methodological study designed to explore novel approaches to optimising measurement of language lateralisation using fTCD. It confirmed that sentence generation gives robust left lateralisation in most people, but is not equivalent to the classic word generation task. Although list generation does not show left-lateralisation at the group level, the LI on this task was correlated with left-lateralised tasks. This suggests that word and sentence generation involve adding a constant directional bias to an underlying continuum of laterality that is reliable in individuals but not biased in either direction. In future research we suggest that consistency of laterality across tasks might have more functional significance than strength or direction of laterality on any one task.


2018 ◽  
Vol 3 ◽  
pp. 104 ◽  
Author(s):  
Zoe V.J. Woodhead ◽  
Holly A. Rutherford ◽  
Dorothy V.M. Bishop

Background: Relative blood flow in the two middle cerebral arteries can be measured using functional transcranial Doppler sonography (fTCD) to give an index of lateralisation as participants perform a specific task. Language laterality has mostly been studied with fTCD using a word generation task, but it is not clear whether this is optimal. Methods: Using fTCD, we evaluated a sentence generation task that has shown good reliability and strong left lateralisation in fMRI. We interleaved trials of word generation, sentence generation and list generation and assessed agreement of these tasks in 31 participants (29 right-handers). Results: Although word generation and sentence generation both gave robust left-lateralisation, Bland-Altman analysis showed that these two methods were not equivalent. The comparison list generation task was not systematically lateralised, but nevertheless laterality indices (LIs) from this task were significantly correlated with the other two tasks. Subtracting list generation LI from sentence generation LI did not affect the strength of the laterality index. Conclusions: This was a pre-registered methodological study designed to explore novel approaches to optimising measurement of language lateralisation using fTCD. It confirmed that sentence generation gives robust left lateralisation in most people, but is not equivalent to the classic word generation task. Although list generation does not show left-lateralisation at the group level, the LI on this task was correlated with left-lateralised tasks. This suggests that word and sentence generation involve adding a constant directional bias to an underlying continuum of laterality that is reliable in individuals but not biased in either direction. In future research we suggest that consistency of laterality across tasks might have more functional significance than strength or direction of laterality on any one task.


1996 ◽  
Vol 78 (1) ◽  
pp. 123-128 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ronald A. Capleton

20 schizophrenic patients were classified as having either predominantly negative ( n = 11) or predominantly positive symptoms ( n = 9), utilizing the Scale for the Assessment of Negative Symptoms and the Scale for the Assessment of Positive Symptoms. Cognitive functioning was evaluated in these participants and 10 non-patient controls using a word-fluency test and word-generation task. Finally, all participants were evaluated using the Coglab Card Sort Test, a computerized version of the Wisconsin Card Sort Test. The only reliable difference in performance among groups was on perseverative errors on the Coglab Card Sort Test Schizophrenic participants made significantly more perseverative errors than controls and those classified as having primarily negative symptoms made more perseverative errors than those classified as having predominantly positive symptoms. These findings confirm previous reports with respect to cognitive functioning of schizophrenic patients and are consistent with the hypotheses regarding frontal lobe dysfunction in schizophrenia. These data encourage research with larger samples.


Author(s):  
John A. Sturgeon ◽  
Katherine T. Martucci

Psychological factors play a key role in the pain experience. Clinical and experimental research has highlighted altered behavioral, cognitive, and emotional responses as endemic in chronic pain populations, which contribute to physical dysfunction and to depression, anxiety, and other psychiatric disorders. Neuroimaging research has complemented the knowledge in this domain by identifying how neural structure and function are altered in chronic pain. Brain processes related to mental illness, emotion, memory, and cognition are distributed throughout the brain and modulate pain processing in both the acute and chronic states. These processes can be targeted both behaviorally and neurophysiologically through noninvasive and nonpharmacological psychological therapies, including cognitive behavioral therapy, acceptance and commitment therapy, and mindfulness-based stress reduction. Psychological therapies are further supported by emerging neuroimaging research that demonstrates changes in brain structure and function associated with positive changes in patients’ responses to pain and overall improved quality of life.


2006 ◽  
Vol 53 (4) ◽  
pp. 215-222 ◽  
Author(s):  
Masakiyo Yamamoto ◽  
Satoshi Ukai ◽  
Kazuhiro Shinosaki ◽  
Ryouhei Ishii ◽  
Shunsuke Kawaguchi ◽  
...  

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