Related Experiment Video
Updated: May 28, 2026

Multi-Modal Signals for Analyzing Pain Responses to Thermal and Electrical Stimuli
Published on: April 5, 2019
Do main caregivers selectively attend to pain-related stimuli in the same way that patients do?
Somayeh Mohammadi1, Mohsen Dehghani, Louise Sharpe
1Family Research Institute, Shahid Beheshti University, G.C., Tehran, Iran Clinical Psychology Unit, University of Sydney, NSW, Australia School of Psychology, Shahid Beheshti University, G.C., Tehran, Iran Academic Center for Education, Culture and Research, Tehran, Iran Health Psychology Department, Leuven University, Leuven, Belgium.
Abstract:
Despite increasing interest in the attentional biases of pain patients towards pain-related stimuli, there have been no investigations of whether the main caregivers of chronic pain patients also selectively attend to pain-related information. We compared the attentional biases to painful or happy faces of 120 chronic pain patients, 118 caregivers, and 50 controls. Analyses found that both patients and caregivers demonstrated biases towards painful faces that were not observed in control participants or to happy faces. Those patients and caregivers who were high in fear of pain demonstrated greater biases than those low in fear of pain, and the biases of the high-in-fear-of-pain group differed significantly from zero. When sub-groups of caregivers were compared, it was found that biases towards painful faces were not observed for those caregivers who accurately identified the level of pain the patient currently reported. In contrast, those caregivers who overestimated or underestimated the patients' pain demonstrated biases that were significantly greater than zero. These results add to the growing weight of evidence suggesting that biases towards pain-related stimuli are observed in chronic pain patients, but that the nature of the stimuli is important. In addition, the results suggest that caregivers, particularly those who either under- or overestimate the level of pain that the patient reports, also demonstrate similar biases. Future research should investigate the links between caregivers' biases and the way in which caregivers respond to pain.
Related Concept Videos
Nociception
Analgesia and Pain Management
Pain
Somatosensation
Techniques of therapeutic communication I: Active Listening, Sharing Observations, Validation, and Using Touch
Therapeutic communication is not the same as social interaction. Social interaction has no goal or purpose and consists of casual information sharing, whereas therapeutic communication has a plan or purpose for the conversation. Therapeutic...
Local Anesthetics: Differential Sensitivity of Nerve Fibers
