Health psychology : official journal of the Division of Health Psychology, American Psychological Association
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College students in four experiments placed their hands in ice water (the cold-pressor task) and reported their distress. They simultaneously engaged in different reaction-time (RT) tasks that varied in the amount of attention required for successful performance. ⋯ Greater distraction, however, failed to reduce physiological, self-report, or behavioral responses to the cold-pressor task. These data call into question the hypothesis that attention mediates the process whereby distraction tasks reduce pain-produced distress.