Experimental pain induces attentional bias that is modified by enhanced motivation: An eye tracking study

In this study, the effects of prior pain experience and motivation on attentional bias towards pain-related information were investigated within two visual-probe tasks via eye movement behaviours. It is hypothesized that pain experience would induce stronger attentional bias and such bias could be suppressed by the motivation to avoid impeding pain.

All participants took part in visual-probe tasks with pictures and words as stimuli that are typically used in studies of attentional bias. They were allocated to three groups: no-pain (NP) group, performing tasks without experiencing pain; pain-experience (PE) group, performing the same tasks following painful stimuli; and pain-experience-with-motivation (PEM) group, undergoing the same procedure as PE group with additional instructions about avoiding impeding pain. Eye movements were recorded during the tasks.

The eye movement data showed that: (1) participants in the PE group exhibited stronger attention bias towards painful pictures than those in the NP group; (2) the attentional bias towards painful pictures was significantly reduced in the PEM group as compared to the PE group. By contrast, the verbal task failed to find these effects using sensory pain words as stimuli.

This study was the first that revealed the impact of acute experimental pain on attentional bias towards pain-related information in healthy individuals through eye tracking. It may provide a possible solution to reduce hypervigilance towards pain-related information by altering the motivational relevance. WHAT DOES THIS STUDY ADD?: (1) This study revealed the impact of experimental pain on attentional bias in healthy individuals; (2) This study may provide a possible approach of altering motivational relevance to control the pain-induced attentional bias towards pain-related information.