Children's Forgetting of Pain-Related Memories

Given that forgetting negative experiences can help children cope with these experiences, we examined their ability to forget negative aspects of painful events.

86 children aged 7-15 years participated in a retrieval-induced forgetting task whereby they repeatedly retrieved positive details of a physically painful experience, and an experimental pain task (cold-pressor task).

Repeatedly retrieving positive details of a prior pain experience produced forgetting of the negative aspects of that experience. Pain-related self-efficacy predicted retrieval-induced forgetting; children with a poorer belief in their ability to cope with pain experienced less forgetting. Children who had a more difficult time forgetting prior negative experiences were more anxious about the pain task and reported higher pain thresholds.

Understanding children's memory for painful experiences may help improve their pain management and coping ability.