The effects of age and fear of pain on attentional and memory biases relating to pain and falls

Abstract

The literature has demonstrated that high levels of fear of pain can lead to avoidance of beneficial activity (e.g., appropriate exercise, physiotherapy) and interfere with rehabilitation. Experimental investigations have also linked high levels of pain-related anxiety to attentional biases favoring pain-related stimuli. Despite the high prevalence of pain among seniors, fear of pain has not been adequately investigated in this population. Moreover, many seniors have been found to display high levels of fear of falling, which is also associated with activity avoidance. We investigated the relationship between fear of pain and fear of falling and studied attentional biases by comparing the responses of seniors to those of younger adults using a computerized task. Analyses supported the hypothesis that fear of pain and fear of falling are distinct, but related, constructs. However, the findings did not provide strong support for the existence of pervasive attentional and memory biases in our sample.

Keywords:

• Fear of pain
• attentional biases
• fear of falling
• aging
• memory biases

Acknowledgments

This research was supported in part, by a Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada Post-graduate Scholarship to Jaime Williams.

Notes

The internal consistency for the GPM was .93 excluding items 19 and 20, which are nominally scored on a 0–10 scale as opposed 0 or 1, as is the case with the remainder of the items.

Experimenter errors during the recording of participant errors (e.g., the experimenter not discerning the color correctly) are always possible. However, because the number of total errors was so low, experimenter error was deemed unlikely to have affected the results.

We also re-ran the analysis using ongoing pain as a grouping variable based on participants’ response to the GPM item, “Do you experience pain several times per week?” The results pertaining to the hypotheses were unchanged.