Fear-conditioned cues of impending pain facilitate attentional engagement.
OBJECTIVE
Selective attention to signals of impending pain allows the avoidance of bodily harm. In order to identify the attentional components involved in the selection of pain signals over competing demands, we used an emotional modification of an exogenous cueing task.


METHODS
Fifty-two pain-free volunteers detected visual targets of which the location was correctly or incorrectly predicted by a spatial cue. Cues were emotionally modulated using differential classical conditioning. The conditioned cue (CS+) was sometimes followed by an electrocutaneous stimulus (UCS), thus becoming a pain signal, whereas the UCS never followed the other cue (CS-), referred to as safety signal.


RESULTS
Analyses of response times showed that pain signals facilitated the directing of attention to their location in comparison to safety signals. In contrast, pain signals did not impair disengagement of attention from their location in comparison to safety signals.


CONCLUSIONS
It is concluded that attention is more strongly engaged to a signal of impending pain compared with a cue signalling its absence. We explore why disengagement from the pain signal is not impaired compared to the safety signal. The findings are discussed in terms of the defensive importance of pain anticipation.
Van Damme
Stefaan
S
Department of Psychology, Ghent University, Belgium. Stefaan.VanDamme@UGent.be
Lorenz
Jürgen
J
Eccleston
Christopher
C
Koster
Ernst H W
EH
De Clercq
Armand
A
Crombez
Geert
G
D000328:Adult; D001288:Attention / Q000502:physiology*; D003196:Computer Graphics; D003213:Conditioning, Psychological / Q000502:physiology; D003463:Cues; D005239:Fear / Q000523:psychology*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D010146:Pain / Q000523:psychology*; D011597:Psychomotor Performance / Q000502:physiology; D014796:Visual Perception / Q000502:physiology