Schoth D E, Williams S, Liossi C
Academic Unit of Psychology, University of Southampton, UK.
Eur J Pain. 2015 Jul;19(6):745-51. doi: 10.1002/ejp.597. Epub 2014 Sep 25.
Attentional biases for pain-related information have been commonly reported in patients with chronic pain. Biases may also exist in individuals who recently experienced an episode of acute clinical pain, although limited investigation has been conducted. The present study is the first to explore attentional biases in women who experienced recent menstrual pain.
Seventy healthy women were recruited who experienced a regular menstrual cycle and a recent painful period. All participants completed a visual-probe task with pain-related and period-related symptom words, which were presented at subliminal (14 ms, followed by nonsensical consonant letter string for 286 ms) and supraliminal (300 ms, 1250 ms) exposure durations. Participants then completed a series of self-report measures, including a measure of cyclical perimenstrual symptoms.
Recent menstrual pain severity was found to be significantly predictive of attentional bias towards pain-related words presented for 1250 ms. However, no significant evidence of bias was found towards period-related symptom words.
Pain-related attentional biases are associated with recent menstrual pain severity. The experience and severity of pain, rather than its duration (i.e., whether pain is chronic or acute), may be the primary determinants of pain-related attentional bias. Future research could explore attentional biases in acute clinical pain samples to confirm this notion.
慢性疼痛患者中普遍存在对疼痛相关信息的注意偏向。尽管相关研究有限，但在近期经历过急性临床疼痛发作的个体中可能也存在这种偏向。本研究首次探讨了近期经历过痛经的女性的注意偏向。
招募了70名月经周期规律且近期有过痛经的健康女性。所有参与者完成了一项视觉探测任务，任务中呈现与疼痛相关和与经期相关的症状词汇，这些词汇分别以阈下（14毫秒，随后是286毫秒的无意义辅音字母串）和阈上（300毫秒、1250毫秒）的暴露时长呈现。参与者随后完成了一系列自我报告测量，包括一项周期性经前症状测量。
发现近期痛经严重程度能显著预测对呈现1250毫秒的疼痛相关词汇的注意偏向。然而，未发现对与经期相关症状词汇存在显著偏向的证据。
与疼痛相关的注意偏向与近期痛经严重程度相关。疼痛的体验和严重程度，而非其持续时间（即疼痛是慢性还是急性），可能是与疼痛相关的注意偏向的主要决定因素。未来研究可探索急性临床疼痛样本中的注意偏向以证实这一观点。
