• Christine M van Vliet, Ann Meulders, Vancleef Linda M G LMG Experimental Health Psychology, Faculty of Psychology and Neuroscience, Maastricht University, Maastricht, the Netherlands., and Vlaeyen Johan W S JWS Research Group Health Psychology, Faculty of Psychology and Educational Sciences, KU Leuven, Leuven, Belgium. .
• Research Group Health Psychology, Faculty of Psychology and Educational Sciences, KU Leuven, Leuven, Belgium.
• Pain. 2021 Mar 1; 162 (3): 875-885.

AbstractThe fear-avoidance model of chronic pain predicts that catastrophic (mis)interpretation of pain elicits pain-related fear that in turn may spur avoidance behaviour leading to chronic pain disability. Here, we investigated whether performing a movement to avoid a painful stimulus in the context of a novel movement increases threat and pain-related fear towards this novel movement and whether avoidance behaviour persisted when given the choice between performing the acquired movement to avoid a painful stimulus or an alternative, novel movement. Applying a robotic arm-reaching task, participants could choose between 2 movements to reach a target location: a short, but painful movement trajectory, or a longer nonpainful movement trajectory. After avoidance acquisition, the option to choose the painful trajectory was removed. The experimental group (N = 50) could choose between the longest trajectory or a novel intermediate trajectory, whereas the control group (N = 50) was allowed to only perform the novel trajectory. In a final test, participants of both groups were allowed to choose any of the 3 trajectories. After acquisition, experimental group participants showed elevated pain expectancy and pain-related fear towards the novel trajectory, compared with the control group. During test, the experimental group participants persisted in performing the longest pain-free (avoidance) trajectory and were less likely to choose the novel trajectory. In addition, these participants maintained higher levels of pain-related fear for the novel trajectory compared with the control group. These findings suggest that avoidance in the context of other neutral activities/movements may lead to the development and maintenance of threat appraisals and irrational fears.Copyright © 2020 International Association for the Study of Pain.

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