Exploring attentional biases towards facial expressions of pain in men and women

Keogh, Edmund; Cheng, Flora; Wang, Shan

doi:10.1002/ejp.1244

Cited by 14 publications

(19 citation statements)

References 41 publications

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“…The effect of this enhanced processing is a reduction in the ability to report neutral stimuli when presented further in the RSVP (for a more detailed analysis see, Bocanegra & Zeelenberg, 2009;McHugo et al, 2013). More generally, there is evidence of slower disengagement from pain-related visual stimuli, across different stimulus types and different experimental tasks (Keogh et al, 2018;Walsh et al, 2020), and these findings are consistent with the literature suggesting that motivationally relevant stimuli modulate temporal attention (Koster et al, 2006;.…”

Section: Jones and Walshsupporting

confidence: 80%

“…These data indicate that there is evidence of cognitive intrusion on attention as a result of pain. A further consideration with regards to the intrusive effect of pain on attention is stimulus characteristic; there is a broad evidence base showing that pain-related stimuli can have a greater cognitive intrusion effect on attentional task performance than neutral stimuli (Todd et al, 2018), and that this in part due to differential attentional processes for pain-valenced stimuli (Keogh et al, 2018). This is particularly relevant during both acute and chronic painful experiences (Khatibi et al, 2009).…”

Section: Experiments 2: Affective Word Blinkmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Hypervigilance to pain has two core behavioural effects; firstly, pain has a negative influence on performance in tasks that require attention processes, including threat cues previously associated with pain but presented in the absence of pain (Moore et al, 2013). Secondly, individuals show an attentional bias towards stimuli which are associated with painful experiences, such as pain-related words (Roelofs et al, 2002), facial expressions (Keogh et al, 2018) or body postures (Walsh et al, 2020). These two effects can be termed attentional disruption and attentional bias.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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The disruptive effects of pain on the early allocation of attentional resources: An attentional blink study

Jones

Walsh

2021

European Journal of Pain

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Section: Jones and Walshsupporting

confidence: 80%

Section: Experiments 2: Affective Word Blinkmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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The disruptive effects of pain on the early allocation of attentional resources: An attentional blink study

Jones

Walsh

2021

European Journal of Pain

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“…The sample used in the present study was unbalanced with regard to gender and therefore did not allow to evaluate gender effects on pain mental representations. Future studies should investigate the impact of the encoder's and decoder's gender [25] on the mental representation of pain facial expressions. Based on previous studies, differences may be expected.…”

Section: Accepted Manuscript 20mentioning

confidence: 99%

Facial Features Underlying the Decoding of Pain Expressions

Blais

Fiset

Furumoto-Deshaies

et al. 2019

The Journal of Pain

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“…Secondly, the sample in this study consisted mainly of women. There is evidence of the impact of gender on pain outcome 59 , 60 . Recruiting a more balanced sample would allow future researchers to examine gender-related factors and improve the generalizability of the results.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Attentional control moderates the relationship between pain catastrophizing and selective attention to pain faces on the antisaccade task

Ranjbar

Mazidi

Sharpe

et al. 2020

Sci Rep

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cognitive models of chronic pain emphasize the critical role of pain catastrophizing in attentional bias to pain-related stimuli. the aim of this study was (a) to investigate the relationship between pain catastrophizing and the ability to inhibit selective attention to pain-related faces (attentional bias); and (b) to determine whether attentional control moderated this relationship. one hundred and ten pain-free participants completed the anti-saccade task with dynamic facial expressions, specifically painful, angry, happy, and neutral facial expressions and questionnaires including a measure of pain catastrophizing. As predicted, participants with high pain catastrophizing had significantly higher error rates for antisaccade trials with pain faces relative to other facial expressions, indicating a difficulty disinhibiting attention towards painful faces. In moderation analyses, data showed that attentional control moderated the relationship between attentional bias to pain faces and pain catastrophizing. post-hoc analyses demonstrated that it was shifting attention (not focusing) that accounted for this effect. Only for those with high self-reported ability to shift attention was there a significant relationship between catastrophizing and attentional bias to pain. These findings confirm that attentional control is necessary for an association between attentional bias and catastrophizing to be observed, which may explain the lack of relationships between attentional bias and individual characteristics, such as catastrophizing, in prior research. Cognitive models of chronic pain propose pain catastrophizing as a risk factor that give rise to pain-related concerns and fuels attentional bias to pain-related information 1-6. However, meta-analyses have failed to find relationships between theoretically important constructs, such as pain catastrophizing and attentional biases 7,8. The absence of a relationship is problematic for these theories that suggest attentional biases are associated with pain catastrophizing 2-6. There are explanations for this lack of relationship. Todd et al. 1 argued that attentional biases have a curvilinear relationship with threat and therefore relationships are obscured when assessed by simple correlations. Van Ryckegham et al. 9 have argued that the context of attentional biases is important to whether biases towards or away from pain are helpful. Another possibility was raised by Dear et al. 10 , who found that the reliability of the dot-probe is poor, and reliability remains questionable for some indices using eye-tracking 11. Another frequently raised issue is the lack of ecological validity of the stimuli (typically words). Numerous authors have argued that pain-related images 12 , facial expressions 13 or somatosensory stimuli 5 are more suitable to assess attentional biases in pain. Although research has used facial expression (e.g. 19 , all studies have used static faces, whereas Ceccarini

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Exploring attentional biases towards facial expressions of pain in men and women

Abstract: Sex-related factors seem to affect how observers view the pain of others. Our results point to an early attentional mechanism that orients the attention of observers away from female expressions of pain.

Cited by 14 publications

References 41 publications

The disruptive effects of pain on the early allocation of attentional resources: An attentional blink study

The disruptive effects of pain on the early allocation of attentional resources: An attentional blink study

Facial Features Underlying the Decoding of Pain Expressions

Attentional control moderates the relationship between pain catastrophizing and selective attention to pain faces on the antisaccade task

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