Pain-related fear predicts disability, but not pain severity: a path analytic approach of the fear-avoidance model.

Two studies are reported that tested the fear-avoidance (FA) model using path analytic techniques. In study 1, 429 employees with back pain at baseline and back pain at 18 months follow-up completed questionnaires assessing sociodemographic information, pain severity, negative affect, pain-related fear, and disability. Results indicated that pain severity at baseline predicted pain-related fear and disability at follow-up, and that pain-related fear is rather a consequence than an antecedent of pain severity.

The role of motivation in distracting attention away from pain: an experimental study.

Research on the effectiveness of distraction as a method of pain control is inconclusive. One mechanism pertains to the motivational relevance of distraction tasks. In this study the motivation to engage in a distraction task during pain was experimentally manipulated.

The automatic orienting of attention to goal-relevant stimuli.

It is often assumed that attention is automatically allocated to stimuli relevant to one's actual goals. However, the existing evidence for this idea is limited in several ways. We investigated whether words relevant to a person's current goal influence the orienting of attention even when an intention to attend to the goal-relevant stimuli is not present.

The validity of the psychopathic personality inventory--revised in a community sample.

Research on the Psychopathic Personality Inventory-Revised (PPI-R) has revealed two factors: Fearless Dominance, and Self-Centered Impulsivity. This study examined the validity of these PPI-R factors in a community sample (N = 675). First, confirmatory factor analyses did not support the two-factor structure.

Perceiving pain in others: automatic and controlled mechanisms.

Unlabelled: Recent developments in clinical, cognitive, and behavioral sciences as well as in social neuroscience can provide new perspectives on our understanding of different forms of pain expression and the social reactions of observers to various types of pain expression. Studies indicate that pain expression is governed by both automatic (unintentional, reflexive) and controlled (intentional, purposive) neuroregulatory systems. Reciprocal mechanisms in observers responsible for automatic (unintentional, reflexive) and controlled (intentional, reflective) reactions also are important.

Keeping pain in mind: a motivational account of attention to pain.

Attention is a key concept in many theories of pain perception. A clinically popular idea is that pain is more intense in persons who are hypervigilant for or bias their attention to pain information. So far, evidence for such bias in pain patients as compared to healthy persons is inconclusive.

Symptomatology in adolescents following initial disclosure of sexual abuse: the roles of crisis support, appraisals and coping.

Objective: The present study examined possible explanations for symptom development and variability in sexually abused adolescents. A theoretical model of sexual abuse, in which appraisal, coping and crisis support play prominent roles, was tested in a clinical group of 100 sexually abused adolescents.

Method: Participants, aged 12-18 years, completed questionnaires regarding severity of abuse, negative appraisals, crisis support, coping strategies, and trauma-related stress symptoms.

The construct validity of the illness cognition questionnaire: the robustness of the three-factor structure across patients with chronic pain and chronic fatigue.

Background: The Illness Cognition Questionnaire (ICQ; Evers et al., J Consult Clin Psychol, 69:1026-1036, 2001) assesses three ways of cognitively evaluating the stressful and aversive character of a chronic illness: helplessness, acceptance, and perceived benefits.

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to evaluate the construct validity of the ICQ in individuals with chronic pain and patients with chronic fatigue.

Falls and catastrophic thoughts about falls predict mobility restriction in community-dwelling older people: A structural equation modelling approach.

Objectives: How and when concerns about falls emerge is not yet completely known, because these concerns are present in both people with and without a falls history. The aim of this study was to investigate the role of catastrophic beliefs about falls and previous falls in the development of concerns about falls and resulting mobility restrictions (MR).

Method: Within a cross-sectional design, 896 older people (mean age 76.

Differentiating orienting and defensive responses to concealed information: the role of verbalization.

Using physiological measures, concealed information can be validly assessed. Orienting theory has been proposed to account for concealed information testing. As orienting is characterized by heart rate deceleration, one would expect this type of heart rate response to concealed information.

The unbearable lightness of somatisation: a systematic review of the concept of somatisation in empirical studies of pain.

Somatisation is often invoked to explain pain and suffering in patients. Lipowski [34] defined somatisation as "a tendency to experience and communicate somatic distress and symptoms unaccounted for by pathological findings, to attribute them to physical illness, and to seek medical help for them" (p. 1359).

Measuring attentional bias to threat in children and adolescents: a matter of speed?

Attentional bias to threat has proven a robust phenomenon in adults but has shown to be less stable in children. This study investigated whether a generally slow response speed may potentially obscure the effects of threat upon attention in children. Three non-clinical samples of different age (children, adolescents, young adults) performed an emotional modification of the spatial cueing task.

Concern about falls elicits changes in gait parameters in conditions of postural threat in older people.

Background: Previous studies have indicated that gait patterns in older people may be affected by concern about falling. The aim of this study was to examine the effects of concern about falling and physiological falls risk on gait performance using a paradigm in which concern about falling was experimentally induced.

Methods: Forty-four community-living older adults (17 men, 27 women) with a mean age of 76.

Physical characteristics of the back are not predictive of low back pain in healthy workers: a prospective study.

Background: In the working population, back disorders are an important reason for sick leave and permanent work inability. In the context of fitting the job to the worker, one of the primary tasks of the occupational health physician is to evaluate the balance between work-related and individual variables. Since this evaluation of work capacity often consists of a physical examination of the back, the objective of this study was to investigate whether a physical examination of the low back, which is routinely performed in occupational medicine, predicts the development of low back pain (LBP).

Allocation of spatial attention to emotional stimuli depends upon arousal and not valence.

Attentional allocation to emotional stimuli is often proposed to be driven by valence and in particular by negativity. However, many negative stimuli are also arousing leaving the question whether valence or arousal accounts for this effect. The authors examined whether the valence or the arousal level of emotional stimuli influences the allocation of spatial attention using a modified spatial cueing task.

Attentional bias to threat: a perceptual accuracy approach.

To investigate attentional bias to threatening information, the authors propose a new version of the spatial cueing paradigm in which the focus is on perceptual accuracy instead of response speed. In two experiments, healthy volunteers made unspeeded discriminations between three visual targets presented left or right. Each target was preceded by a visual cue (colored rectangle) at either the same (valid) or opposite (invalid) location.

Does the sight of physical threat induce a tactile processing bias? Modality-specific attentional facilitation induced by viewing threatening pictures.

Threatening stimuli are thought to bias spatial attention toward the location from which the threat is presented. Although this effect is well-established in the visual domain, little is known regarding whether tactile attention is similarly affected by threatening pictures. We hypothesised that tactile attention might be more affected by cues implying physical threat to a person's bodily tissues than by cues implying general threat.

Is visual dominance modulated by the threat value of visual and auditory stimuli?

The simultaneous presentation of a visual and an auditory stimulus can lead to a decrease in people's ability to perceive or respond to the auditory stimulus. In this study, we investigate the effect that threat has upon this phenomenon, known as the Colavita visual dominance effect. Participants performed two blocks of trials containing 40% visual, 40% auditory, and 20% bimodal trials.

Sex offender management using the polygraph: a critical review.

Reducing recidivism is a central goal in the treatment of sex offenders. In Europe, there is an increased interest in using the polygraph ("lie detector") as a tool in the treatment and risk assessment of convicted sex offenders. This interest originated from optimistic reports by American clinicians who argued that polygraph testing in the treatment of sex offenders is akin to urine analysis in the treatment of drug addiction.