Exploring the role of attentional bias modification in the experience of pain

Brief attentional bias modification will be delivered in a laboratory setting. Undergraduate students will be trained to pay less attention to pain-related words (either sensory pain or affective pain) in a computer task. Participants will also complete questionnaires, a computer task to measure interpretation biases (i.e. interpreting ambiguous stimuli as pain-related), and an acute experimental pain task. There is only one experimental pain task: the cold pressor, described as follows: Two water tanks manufactured by Thermoline Scientific Australia were used to conduct the cold pressor task. Each tank was comprised of a 20L circulating water bath chamber (model TLWB-30), immersion cooler (TIC-400) and a heat circulator (TU-3). In order to ensure participants initial arm temperature was controlled for, they were firstly asked to submerge their arm up to the elbow for 30 seconds in the warm tank, with a maintained temperature of 37degrees C ( plus or minus 0.5). Following this, they submerged the same arm up to the elbow into the tank of cold water, maintained at 5 degrees C(plus or minus 0.5). Research in the past indicates the cold pressor task produces the “Lewis Effect”, whereby pain is produced by vasodilation of the blood vessels due to warm water, quickly followed by vasoconstriction due to cold water.