Abstracts Psychology

The Effect of Situational Pain Catastrophizing on Pain Perception

by Sachell E Calderon

The pain experience is a complex issue, influenced by cognitive and affective factors such as past experiences and thoughts towards pain. The current study hypothesized that pain catastrophizining scores are related to pain response. Individuals that present higher levels of catastrophizing will demonstrate higher levels of pain summation. Furthermore, this difference will be influenced by pain type and testing site. Painful stimuli were administered through contact stimulus (CHEPS, medoc Ltd, Ramat Yishai Israel) on 32 subjects (13 males/19 females; avg. 20.5 yrs) on two different sites (palm/forearm). Each subject provided STAI questionnaire answers followed by first and second pain stimuli, and temporal summation stimuli ending with SPCS questionnaire answers. Significant associations between anxiety and first pain slope (p= .41.=.02) and threshold (p=-.46, p=.01)resided at the palm. Associations between catastrophizing and first pain slop (p= .28, p= .05) were found in the palm and first pain threshold in the forearm ( r= -.27, p= .05). We cannot conclude any relationship exists between anxiety and catastrophizing scores within pain type perception or temporal summation, within this data set. Further research needs to be conducted to draw more conclusive results.