Department of Psychology, University of Calgary, Calgary, AB, Canada.
Alberta Children's Hospital Research Institute, Calgary, AB, Canada.
Pain. 2019 Aug;160(8):1866-1875. doi: 10.1097/j.pain.0000000000001565.
Negatively biased memories for pain (ie, recalled pain is higher than initial report) robustly predict future pain experiences. During early childhood, parent-child reminiscing has been posited as playing a critical role in how children's memories are constructed and reconstructed; however, this has not been empirically demonstrated. This study examined the role of parent-child reminiscing about a recent painful surgery in young children's pain memory development. Participants included 112 children (Mage = 5.3 years; 60% boys) who underwent a tonsillectomy and one of their parents (34% fathers). Pain was assessed in hospital and during the recovery phase at home. Two weeks after surgery, parents and children attended a laboratory visit to participate in a structured narrative elicitation task wherein they reminisced about the surgery. Four weeks after surgery, children completed an established pain memory interview using the same previously administered scales through telephone. Narratives were coded for style (elaboration) and content (pain and emotion) based on coding schemes drawn from the developmental psychology literature. Findings revealed that a more elaborative parental reminiscing style in addition to greater use of emotional words predicted more accurate/positively biased pain memories. Greater parental use of pain words predicted more negatively biased pain memories. Although there were no sex and parent-role differences in pain memory biases, mothers and fathers differed in how they reminisced with their boys vs girls. This research underscores the importance of parent-child reminiscing in children's pain memory development and may be used to inform the development of a parent-led memory reframing intervention to improve pediatric pain management.
对疼痛的负面记忆偏差（即，回忆的疼痛高于初始报告）强烈预测未来的疼痛体验。在儿童早期，亲子回忆被认为在儿童记忆的构建和重构方式中起着关键作用；然而，这尚未得到实证证明。本研究考察了亲子回忆最近一次痛苦手术对幼儿疼痛记忆发展的作用。参与者包括 112 名儿童（平均年龄=5.3 岁；60%为男孩），他们接受了扁桃体切除术，他们的父母中的一位（34%为父亲）。疼痛在医院和在家恢复期间进行评估。手术后两周，父母和孩子参加了实验室访问，参与了一个结构化的叙事引出任务，他们回忆了手术。手术后四周，孩子们通过电话使用相同的先前管理量表完成了既定的疼痛记忆访谈。根据发展心理学文献中的编码方案，对叙事进行了风格（详细程度）和内容（疼痛和情绪）的编码。研究结果表明，除了更多地使用情感词汇外，父母更详细的回忆风格还预测了更准确/更积极的疼痛记忆偏差。父母更多地使用疼痛词汇预测了更消极的疼痛记忆偏差。尽管在疼痛记忆偏差方面没有性别和父母角色差异，但母亲和父亲在与男孩和女孩的回忆方式上存在差异。这项研究强调了亲子回忆在儿童疼痛记忆发展中的重要性，并可能用于告知父母主导的记忆重塑干预措施的开发，以改善儿科疼痛管理。
