Attentional biases to pain and social threat in children with recurrent abdominal pain.
OBJECTIVE
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.
Boyer
Margaret C
MC
Department of Psychiatry, Stanford University School of Medicine, 401 Quarry Road, Stanford, California 94305, USA. mboyer@post.harvard.edu
Compas
Bruce E
BE
Stanger
Catherine
C
Colletti
Richard B
RB
Konik
Brian S
BS
Morrow
Sara B
SB
Thomsen
Alexandra H
AH
D015746:Abdominal Pain / Q000523:psychology*; D000293:Adolescent; D000704:Analysis of Variance; D001288:Attention; D001362:Avoidance Learning; D002648:Child; D002908:Chronic Disease; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D011930:Reaction Time; D012919:Social Behavior; D013360:Subliminal Stimulation