Baert Fleur, Van Ryckeghem Dimitri, Sanchez-Lopez Alvaro, Miller Megan M, Hirsh Adam T, Trost Zina, Vervoort Tine
Department of Experimental-Clinical and Health Psychology, Ghent University, Ghent, Belgium.
Department of Clinical Psychological Science, Maastricht University, Maastricht, Netherlands.
Br J Pain. 2022 Jun;16(3):303-316. doi: 10.1177/20494637211057092. Epub 2021 Dec 28.
The current study investigated the role of maternal child- and self-oriented injustice appraisals about child pain in understanding maternal attention for child pain and adult anger cues and pain-attending behavior.
Forty-four children underwent a painful cold pressor task (CPT) while their mother observed. Eye tracking was used to measure maternal attention to child pain and adult anger cues. Initial attention allocation and attentional maintenance were indexed by probability of first fixation and gaze duration, respectively. Maternal pain-attending behaviors toward the child were videotaped and coded after CPT completion. Mothers also rated the intensity of pain and anger cues used in the free-viewing tasks. All analyses controlled for maternal catastrophizing about child pain.
Neither child-oriented nor self-oriented injustice was associated with maternal attentional bias toward child pain. Regarding attention toward self-relevant anger cues, differential associations were observed for self- and child-oriented injustice appraisals, with maternal self-oriented injustice being associated with a greater probability of first fixating on anger and with higher anger ratings, whereas maternal child-oriented injustice was associated with enhanced attentional maintenance toward anger. Neither type of maternal injustice appraisals was associated with maternal pain-attending behavior, which was only associated with maternal catastrophizing.
The current study sheds light on potential differential mechanisms through which maternal self- vs. child-oriented injustice appraisals may exert their impact on parent and child pain-related outcomes. Theoretical implications and future directions are discussed.
本研究探讨了母亲对儿童疼痛的儿童导向型和自我导向型不公正评价在理解母亲对儿童疼痛的关注、对成人愤怒线索的关注及疼痛关注行为方面所起的作用。
44名儿童接受了冷压痛任务（CPT），其母亲在旁观察。采用眼动追踪技术测量母亲对儿童疼痛和成人愤怒线索的关注。首次注视概率和注视持续时间分别作为初始注意力分配和注意力维持的指标。在CPT完成后，对母亲对儿童的疼痛关注行为进行录像并编码。母亲们还对自由观看任务中使用的疼痛和愤怒线索的强度进行了评分。所有分析均控制了母亲对儿童疼痛的灾难化思维。
无论是儿童导向型还是自我导向型不公正，均与母亲对儿童疼痛的注意力偏差无关。关于对自我相关愤怒线索的关注，自我导向型和儿童导向型不公正评价存在不同的关联，母亲的自我导向型不公正与首次注视愤怒的更大可能性及更高的愤怒评分相关，而母亲的儿童导向型不公正与对愤怒的注意力维持增强相关。两种类型的母亲不公正评价均与母亲的疼痛关注行为无关，母亲的疼痛关注行为仅与母亲的灾难化思维相关。
本研究揭示了母亲自我导向型和儿童导向型不公正评价可能对亲子疼痛相关结果产生影响的潜在不同机制。讨论了理论意义和未来研究方向。
