paradigma dot attentional

ORIGINAL ARTICLE Fear-conditioned cues of impending pain facilitate attentional engagement Stefaan Van Damme a,b, *, Jürgen Lorenz c , Christopher Eccleston d , Ernst H.W. Koster a , Armand De Clercq e , Geert Crombez a,b a Department of Psychology, Ghent University, Henri Dunantlaan 2, B-9000 Ghent, Belgium b Research Institute for Psychology and Health, P.O. Box 80.140, 3508 TC Utrecht, The Netherlands c University of Hamburg, Institute of Neurophysiology and Pathophysiology, Martinistra b e 52, 20246 Germany d Department of Psychology, University of Bath, Claverton Down, Bath BA2 7AY, UK e Department of Applied Mathematics and Computer Science, Ghent University, Krijgslaan 281 (S9), B-9000 Ghent, Belgium Received 7 August 2003; revised and accepted 17 November 2003 KEYWORDS Selective attention; Experimental pain; Classical conditioning MOTS CLÉS Attention sélective ; Douleur expérimental ; Conditionnement classique Abstract Aims of study. – Selective attention to signals of impending pain allows the avoidance of bodily harm. In order to identify the attentional components involved in the selection of pain signals over competing demands, we used an emotional modification of an exogenous cueing task. Metho ds. – Fifty-two pain-free volunteers detected visual targets of which the location was correctly or incorrectly predicted by a spatial cue. Cues were emotionally modulated using differential classical condi tioning. The condition ed cue (CS+) was some time s followed by an electrocutaneous stimulus (UCS), thus becoming a pain signal, whereas the UCS never followed the other cue (CS–), referred to as safety signal. Results. – Analyses of response times showed that pain signals facilitated the directing of attention to their location in comparison to safety signals. In contrast, pain signals did not impair disengagement of attention from their location in comparison to safety signals. Conclusion. – It is concluded that attention is more strongly engaged to a signal of impending pain compared with a cue signalling its absence. We explore why disengagement from the pain signal is not impaired compared to the safety signal. The findings are discussed in terms of the defensive importance of pain anticipation. © 2003 Elsevier SAS. All rights reserved. Résumé Objectifs. – L’attention sélective dirigée vers un signal de la douleur imminente permet d’évi ter les dommages physique s. Afin d’ide ntif ier les composantes attentionnelles impliquées dans la sélection des signaux de la douleur, nous avons utilisé une version émotionnelle de la tâche d’indiçage. Méthodes. – Cinquante-deux sujets volontaires sains avaient pour tâche de détecter des cibles visuelles, dont la localisation spatiale était annoncée — de façon correcte ou incorrecte — par un indice spatial. La valence émotionnelle de l’indice était induite à * Corresponding author. Faculty of Psychology and Educational Sciences, Ghent University, Henri Dunantlaan 2, 9000 Ghent, Belgium. Tel.: +32-9-2649105; fax: +32-9-2649149. E-mail address: [email protected] (S. Van Damme). Neurophysiologie clinique 34 (2004) 33–39 www.elsevier.com/locate/neucli © 2003 Elsevier SAS. All rights reserved. doi: 10.1016/S0987-7053(03)00102-3

paradigma dot attentional

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