A summary of pain and pain-related variables in the Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children.

Background: To study pain, data on pain characteristics, possible triggers and consequences - such as the impact of pain on people's lives - need to be available. When not collated, described and/or organised in a systematic manner, it can be difficult to assess how useful an existing dataset may be for one's project. This data note describes and categorises the complex and multi-modal indices of pain available in the Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children (ALSPAC).

How Well Can We Measure Chronic Pain Impact in Existing Longitudinal Cohort Studies? Lessons Learned.

Multiple large longitudinal cohorts provide opportunities to address questions about predictors of pain and pain trajectories, even when not anticipated in the design of the historical databases. This focus article uses 2 empirical examples to illustrate the processes of assessing the measurement properties of data from large cohort studies to answer questions about pain. In both examples, data were screened to select candidate variables that captured the impact of chronic pain on self-care activities, productivity, and social activities.

Social Determinants and Consequences of Pain: Toward Multilevel, Intersectional, and Life Course Perspectives.

Despite wide endorsement of a biopsychosocial framework for pain, social aspects of pain remain rarely addressed in the context of pain prevention and management. In this review, we aim to 1) examine the broad scope of social determinants and consequences of pain and their interactions across multiple levels of organization, and 2) provide a framework synthesizing existing concepts and potential areas for future work on social aspects of pain, drawing upon socioecological, intersectional, and life course approaches. Integrating interdisciplinary theory and evidence, we outline pathways through which multilevel social factors and pain may affect each other over time.

A developmental framework for understanding the influence of sex and gender on health: Pediatric pain as an exemplar.

Sex differences are a robust finding in many areas of adult health, including cardiovascular disease, psychiatric disorders, and chronic pain. However, many sex differences are not consistently observed until after the onset of puberty. This has led to the hypothesis that hormones are primary contributors to sex differences in health outcomes, largely ignoring the relative contributions of early developmental influences, emerging psychosocial factors, gender, and the interaction between these variables.

Sensing behavior change in chronic pain: a scoping review of sensor technology for use in daily life.

Technology offers possibilities for quantification of behaviors and physiological changes of relevance to chronic pain, using wearable sensors and devices suitable for data collection in daily life contexts. We conducted a scoping review of wearable and passive sensor technologies that sample data of psychological interest in chronic pain, including in social situations. Sixty articles met our criteria from the 2783 citations retrieved from searching.

Challenges with embedding an integrated sex and gender perspective into pain research: Recommendations and opportunities.

The focus of this article, within this BBI horizons special issue, is on sex, gender, and pain. We summarise what is currently known about sex- and gender-related variations in pain, exploring intersectional biological and psychosocial mechanisms, and highlight gaps in knowledge and understanding. Five key challenges with the exploration of sex and gender in pain research are presented, relating to: conceptual imprecision, research bias, limitations with binary descriptions, integrating sex and gender, and timely adoption/implementation of good research practice.

Psychological therapies delivered remotely for the management of chronic pain (excluding headache) in adults.

Background: Chronic pain (pain lasting three months or more) is an unpleasant sensory and emotional experience associated with actual or potential tissue damage. Common types (excluding headache) include back pain, fibromyalgia, and neuropathic pain. Access to traditional face-to-face therapies can be restricted by healthcare resources, geography, and cost.

Comparing the Effects of Thought Suppression and Focused Distraction on Pain-Related Attentional Biases in Men and Women.

Increasing attentional focus away from pain can affect pain experience, suggesting that cognitive strategies that move attentional allocation may be a moderator of pain. In a pre-post-design, the present study examined the effects of 2 cognitive strategies used in pain contexts, thought suppression and focused distraction, on subsequent pain-related attention. Thought suppression was hypothesized to increase pain-related attention, whereas focused distraction was expected to reduce it.

Attentional Biases Towards Body Expressions of Pain in Men and Women.

This study investigated whether there are gender differences in attention to bodily expressions of pain and core emotions. Three experiments are reported using the attentional dot probe task. Images of men and women displaying bodily expressions, including pain, were presented.

Ignoring space around a painful limb? No evidence for a body-related visuospatial attention bias in complex regional pain syndrome.

Background: Complex Regional Pain Syndrome (CRPS) is a disorder of severe chronic pain in one or more limb(s). People with CRPS report unusual perceptions of the painful limb suggesting altered body representations, as well as difficulty attending to their affected limb (i.e.

The gender context of pain.

Pain is a major source of global suffering, with women bearing the greatest burden. Alongside biology, psychological and social factors, including gender, help explain these differences. However, there has been no direct attempt to develop a unified social psychological model of men and women's pain.

The Time Course of Facial Expression Recognition Using Spatial Frequency Information: Comparing Pain and Core Emotions.

We are able to recognize others' experience of pain from their facial expressions. However, little is known about what makes the recognition of pain possible and whether it is similar or different from core emotions. This study investigated the mechanisms underpinning the recognition of pain expressions, in terms of spatial frequency (SF) information analysis, and compared pain with 2 core emotions (ie, fear and happiness).

Gender differences in attention to pain body postures in a social context: a novel use of the bodies in the crowd task.

Pain signals the presence of potential harm, captures attention, and can inhibit performance on concurrent tasks. What is less well known, however, is whether such attentional capture also occurs in a wider social context, such as when observing people in pain. To explore this possibility, we adopted a novel social-cue detection methodology: the bodies-in-the-crowd task.

Exploring the relationship between male norm beliefs, pain-related beliefs and behaviours: An online questionnaire study.

Background: Gender beliefs help explain the variation found in pain among men and women. Gender norms and expectations are thought to affect how men and women report and express pain. However, less is known about how such beliefs are related to pain outside of laboratory settings.

Predicting the consequences of physical activity: An investigation into the relationship between anxiety sensitivity, interoceptive accuracy and action.

The ability to predict the consequences of our actions is imperative for the everyday success of our interactions. From negotiating an uneven surface, to mounting an immune response, we continually infer the limits of our body. The current investigation considered the impact that the inferred consequences of action has on the placement of limits.

People in pain make poorer decisions.

Chronic pain affects 1 in 5 people and has been shown to disrupt attention. Here, we investigated whether pain disrupts everyday decision making. In study 1, 1322 participants completed 2 tasks online: a shopping-decisions task and a measure of decision outcomes over the previous 10 years.

An investigation of the effect of experimental pain on logical reasoning.

Pain disrupts attention to prioritise avoidance of harm and promote analgesic behaviour. This could in turn have negative effects on higher-level cognitions, which rely on attention. In the current article, we examined the effect of thermal pain induction on 3 measures of reasoning: the Cognitive Reflection Test, Belief Bias Syllogisms task, and Conditional Inference task.

Perceptions of gendered and ungendered pain relief norms and stereotypes using Q-methodology.

Pain is ubiquitous, but effective pain relief eludes many. Research has shown that some pain behaviours are perceived as gendered, and this may influence the way men and women express and cope with pain, but such enquiries have not extended to specific methods of pain relief. Our aim was to explore perceptions of the most socially acceptable ways for men and women to relieve pain.

The tripartite structure of pain-related affect: a confirmatory factor analysis.

Numerous emotion-based constructs seem related to pain and pain-related disability. These include general affect constructs such as anxiety and depression, as well as specific anxiety-related constructs such as anxiety sensitivity and fear of pain. Few studies examine the relationships between these constructs.

The role of spatial frequency information in the decoding of facial expressions of pain: a novel hybrid task.

Spatial frequency (SF) information contributes to the recognition of facial expressions, including pain. Low-SF encodes facial configuration and structure and often dominates over high-SF information, which encodes fine details in facial features. This low-SF preference has not been investigated within the context of pain.