• Aline Wauters, Frederick Daenen, Van RyckeghemDimitri M LDMLDepartment of Clinical Psychological Science, Maastricht University, Maastricht, Netherlands., Melanie Noel, and Tine Vervoort.
• Department of Experimental-Clinical and Health Psychology, Ghent University, Ghent, Belgium.
• Eur J Pain. 2024 Nov 28.

BackgroundChildren's inability to forget the negative aspects of a painful event is associated with more anticipatory anxiety at an upcoming pain task and lower pain thresholds; however, the impact of forgetting on children's pain outcomes has not been examined. Retrieval-Induced Forgetting (RIF) was experimentally induced to investigate whether children would (1) forget more negative details of a previous painful autobiographic event and; (2) report better pain-related outcomes for an unrelated pain task (i.e., cold pressor task; CPT). Additionally, it was investigated whether the success of RIF was dependent on child characteristics known to influence children's memories for pain (i.e., attention bias to pain, attention switching ability and pain catastrophizing).MethodsHealthy school children (N = 128; 9-16 years old) recalled and rehearsed memory details of two painful autobiographical events, while only children in the randomized RIF group rehearsed positive details. All children underwent two CPTs (before and after RIF) and reported pain-related outcomes. Two weeks later, children recalled CPT pain and reported on future pain expectancies.ResultsChildren in the RIF group remembered less negative details of their past autobiographical pain events, but also reported a greater reduction in pain-related fear from the CPT 2 compared to their ratings for CPT 1, than children in the control group. They furthermore expected less pain-related fear 2 weeks later for a future pain task.DiscussionFindings suggest that RIF is a promising avenue in pediatric pain management that could be harnessed to foster more positive memories and better future pain experiences.Significance StatementRetrieval-induced forgetting (RIF) makes children forget negative details of a past autobiographical pain experience, decreases experienced pain-related fear for experimental pain and lowers future pain-related fear expectancies. Results show a promising role for RIF- based memory interventions in the context of paediatric pain care.© 2024 European Pain Federation ‐ EFIC ®.

8 keywords...

hide…