• Ahmad N Abudoush, Amna Noureen, Maria Panagioti, Ellen Poliakoff, Van RyckeghemDimitri M LDMLFaculty of Psychology and Neuroscience, Maastricht University, Maastricht, the Netherlands.Department of Experimental-Clinical and Health Psychology, Ghent University, Ghent, Belgium.Department of Behavioural and Cognitive Scien, Alexander Hodkinson, and Nusrat Husain.
• School of Health Sciences, Faculty of Biology Medicine and Health Sciences, The University of Manchester, Manchester, United Kingdom.
• Pain. 2023 Aug 1; 164 (8): 167716921677-1692.

AbstractInformation-processing biases such as attentional, interpretation, and memory biases are believed to play a role in exacerbating and maintaining chronic pain (CP). Evidence suggests that individuals with CP show attentional bias toward pain-related information. However, the selective attentional processes that underpin this bias are not always well outlined in the literature. To improve current understanding, a systematic review was performed using a descriptive synthesis of reaction time-based studies. A random-effects meta-analysis was added to explore whether the results of previous meta-analyses would be confirmed using studies with a larger sample size. For this review, 2008 studies were screened from 4 databases, of which 34 (participant n = 3154) were included in the review and a subset of 15 (participant n = 1339) were included in the meta-analysis. Review results were summarised by producing a descriptive synthesis for all studies. Meta-analysis results indicated a mild significant attentional bias toward sensory pain-related information (k = 15, g = 0.28, 95% CI [0.16, 0.39], I 2 = 43.2%, P = 0.038), and preliminary evidence of significant moderate bias towards affective pain-related information (k = 3, g = 0.48, 95% CI [0.23, 0.72], I 2 = 7.1%, P = 0.341) for CP groups compared with control groups. We explored the main tasks, stimuli, and CP subtypes used to address attentional biases and related processes. However, variation across studies did not allow for a decisive conclusion about the role of stimulus, task type, or related attentional processes. In addition, a table of CP attention-related models was produced and tested for reliability. Finally, other results and recommendations are discussed.Copyright © 2023 The Author(s). Published by Wolters Kluwer Health, Inc. on behalf of the International Association for the Study of Pain.

17 keywords...

hide…