Hypervigilance to pain predicts pain sensitivity
Baum, C., Huber, C., Kunz, M., and Lautenbacher, S.
Otto-Friedrich Universität Bamberg
The aim of the present study was to assess the predictive power of processing of pain-related information, comprising concepts as hypervigilance to pain, pain-related catastrophizing and anxiety to pain, in explaining individual differences in experimental pain sensitivity (pressure/ thermal pain threshold) in healthy subjects. In 160 subjects (age 13-61; 80 females) hypervigilance was assessed with behavioural method, e.g. dot-probe task (neutral-pain word pairs), and self-report-measure (PVAQ); pain-related catastrophizing and anxiety was assessed with questionnaires (PCS, PASS). Results of hierarchical multiple regression analyses showed that self-report of hypervigilance contributed significantly to prediction of pain sensitivity, whereas PCS and PASS did not. However, inconsistent with our prediction, the effect was in the opposite direction. Entering attentional bias indices from dot probe response latencies explained a significant amount of variance in pain sensitivity. Results showed further that state anxiety (STAI) did not moderate the relationship between processing of pain-related stimuli and pain sensitivity.