Operant conditioning of the pain experience.
Two experiments were carried out to study operant conditioning of pain report. Further, it was investigated whether pain-related psychophysiological and psychological measures (skin conductance response and magnitude matching) could also be conditioned operantly. In both experiments subjects received 12 painful electric shocks of equal intensity. In Exp. 1 healthy subjects were assigned to either a control group or an up-conditioning group. Up-conditioning occurred by verbally rewarding increases in pain report and punishing decreases. Analyses indicated that up-conditioning of both pain report and the pain-related psychophysiological measures succeeded. To rule out alternative explanations of the results (attention shift towards pain and conditioning of anxiety) the verbal punishments were adjusted in Exp. 2. A down-conditioning group was also added. The attempt to replicate the results of Exp. 1 failed and down-conditioning of the pain report could not be established. These inconsistent results are most probably due to modified punishment of responses. The consequences for the results of Exp. 1 are discussed. Based on the results of post hoc analyses, some suggestions are made for operant conditioning studies of pain.
Lousberg
R
R
Centre for Pain Expertise Academic Hospital Maastricht, The Netherlands.
Groenman
N H
NH
Schmidt
A J
AJ
Gielen
A A
AA
D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D001143:Arousal; D003216:Conditioning, Operant; D004597:Electroshock; D005260:Female; D005712:Galvanic Skin Response; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D010146:Pain / Q000523:psychology*; D010147:Pain Measurement; D017288:Pain Threshold; D012057:Reinforcement, Verbal