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Visuospatial and Verbal Memory in Chronic Pain Patients: An Explorative Study
Author(s) -
Busch Hillevi,
Montgomery William,
Melin Bo,
Lundberg Ulf
Publication year - 2006
Publication title -
pain practice
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.899
H-Index - 58
eISSN - 1533-2500
pISSN - 1530-7085
DOI - 10.1111/j.1533-2500.2006.00083.x
Subject(s) - recall , chronic pain , medicine , cognition , verbal memory , free recall , audiology , physical therapy , psychology , psychiatry , cognitive psychology
Cognitive bias, such as selective memory for pain‐related information, is frequently observed in chronic pain patients and is assessed mostly using verbal material. Beside word lists, the current study used photographs of people presenting pain behaviors to assess memory bias in chronic pain patients. Chronic pain patients were hypothesized to show better recall of pain‐related words and pictures as compared to pain‐free controls. Twenty‐eight female chronic neck patients and 28 pain‐free female controls completed two computerized pictorial memory games and two word recall tasks. Patients and controls performed equally well in the neutral pictorial memory game. In the pain‐related game, patients performed significantly worse than controls. No significant differences were found in the word recall task. The result is discussed in terms of cognitive avoidance.