CHRONIC PAIN AND DISTRACTION - AN EXPERIMENTAL INVESTIGATION INTO THEROLE OF SUSTAINED AND SHIFTING ATTENTION IN THE PROCESSING OF CHRONICPERSISTENT PAIN

Although there is anecdotal evidence for the psychoanalgesic propertie s of distraction, research evidence is equivocal. Drawing on the clini cal and experimental studies of attention-based coping strategies for pain control, and the theoretically driven 'cognitive' models of the h uman attention system, two experiments are reported. Experiment One de monstrates that chronic pain patients suffering high intensity pain sh ow significantly impaired performance on an attentionally demanding ta sk when compared to low pain patients and normal controls. Experiment Two tests the hypothesis that the low intensity pain patients in Exper iment One are coping with the dual demand of processing the pain and p rocessing the task by switching quickly between these attentional dema nds. The results:of both experiments are discussed in terms of the evi dence for the analgesic properties attention based coping strategies w ith clinical pain populations and re-addresses the literature on copin g with pain in terms of cognitive theories of attention.