Endorsement and memory bias of self-referential pain stimuli in depressed pain patients.
This study investigates information processing in chronic pain patients by comparing the responses of depressed pain patients, non-depressed pain patients and non-pain control subjects. Each subject contributed two scores: endorsement of adjectives as descriptors of themselves and their best-friends; and free recall of the presented words. The stimuli consisted of depression-related, pain-related and neutral control adjectives, and each content category was split into negative and positive valence. The four-way interaction between group, reference, content and valence was significant both in the recall data and the endorsement data. Further analysis revealed that depressed pain patients exhibited a bias towards self-referential negative pain words, but not towards self-referential negative depression information. These results are interpreted in line with content specificity theory of information processing and have implications for targeting cognitive interventions with pain patients.
Pincus
T
T
Department of Psychology, University College London, UK.
Pearce
S
S
McClelland
A
A
Isenberg
D
D
D000328:Adult; D002908:Chronic Disease; D003863:Depression / Q000523:psychology*; D004532:Ego; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008568:Memory; D011939:Mental Recall; D008875:Middle Aged; D010146:Pain; D014825:Vocabulary