• Tine Vervoort, Line Caes, Zina Trost, Michael Sullivan, Karoline Vangronsveld, and Liesbet Goubert.
• Department of Experimental-Clinical and Health Psychology, Ghent University, Ghent, Belgium Department of Psychology, Medicine and Neurology, McGill University, Montréal, Quebec, Canada.
• Pain. 2011 Jul 1; 152 (7): 1591-1599.

AbstractThe present study examined existing communal and operant accounts of children's pain behavior by looking at the impact of parental presence and parental attention upon children's pain expression as a function of child pain catastrophizing. Participants were 38 school children and 1 of their parents. Children completed a cold pressor pain task (CPT) twice, first when told that no one was observing (alone condition) and subsequently when told that they were being observed by their parent (parent-present condition). A 3-minute parent-child interaction occurred between the 2 CPT immersions, allowing measurement of parental attention to their child's pain (ie, parental pain-attending talk vs non-pain-attending talk). Findings showed that child pain catastrophizing moderated the impact of parental presence upon facial displays of pain. Specifically, low-catastrophizing children expressed more pain in the presence of their parent, whereas high-catastrophizing children showed equally pronounced pain expression when alone or in the presence of a parent. Furthermore, children's catastrophizing moderated the impact of parental attention upon facial displays and self-reports of pain; higher levels of parental nonpain talk were associated with increased facial expression and self-reports of pain among high-catastrophizing children; for low-catastrophizing children, facial and self-report of pain was independent of parental attention to pain. The findings are discussed in terms of possible mechanisms that may drive and maintain pain expression in high-catastrophizing children, as well as potential limitations of traditional theories in explaining pediatric pain expression.Copyright © 2011 International Association for the Study of Pain. Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

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