Journal of Pediatric Psychology Advance Access originally published online on April 20, 2005
Journal of Pediatric Psychology 2006 31(2):209-220; doi:10.1093/jpepsy/jsj015
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Attentional Biases to Pain and Social Threat in Children with Recurrent Abdominal Pain
1 University of Vermont and 2 Vanderbilt University
All correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Margaret C. Boyer, Department of Psychiatry, Stanford University School of Medicine, 401 Quarry Road, Stanford, California 94305. E-mail: mboyer{at}post.harvard.edu or Bruce E. Compas, Department of Psychology and Human Development, Vanderbilt University, Peabody College 512, 230 Appleton Place, Nashville, Tennessee 37203-5701. E-mail: bruce.compas{at}vanderbilt.edu.
Received January 10, 2004; revisions received June 22, 2004; September 7, 2004 and December 13, 2004; accepted January 31, 2005
Objectives To test whether children with recurrent abdominal pain (RAP) exhibit subliminal (nonconscious) and supraliminal (conscious) attentional biases to pain-related words, and to determine correlates of these biases. Previous research indicates that individuals attend to disorder-relevant threat words, and in this study, attentional biases to disorder-relevant threat (pain), alternative threat (social threat), and neutral words were compared. Methods Participants were 59 children with RAP who completed a computer-based attentional bias task. Participants and their parents also completed questionnaires measuring pain, somatic complaints, anxiety/depression, and body vigilance. Results Children with RAP showed attentional biases toward subliminal pain-related words and attentional biases away from supraliminal pain-related words. Participants’ attentional biases to social threat-related words were marginally significant and also reflected subliminal attention and supraliminal avoidance. Attentional biases were related to parent and child reports of pain, body vigilance, and anxiety/depression. Conclusions Children with RAP show nonconscious attention to and conscious avoidance of threat-related words. Their attentional biases relate to individual differences in symptom severity. Implications for models of pediatric pain and future studies are discussed.
Key words: attention; attentional bias; recurrent abdominal pain.
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