Eye Gaze Markers Indicate Visual Attention to Threatening Images in Individuals with Chronic Back Pain
1
Musculoskeletal Science and Sports Medicine Research Centre, Manchester Metropolitan University, Manchester M15 6BH, UK
2
Vice Chancellor’s Office, University of Salford, Salford M5 4WT, UK
*
Author to whom correspondence should be addressed.
J. Clin. Med. 2019, 8(1), 31; https://doi.org/10.3390/jcm8010031
Received: 20 November 2018 / Revised: 18 December 2018 / Accepted: 27 December 2018 / Published: 31 December 2018
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Rehabilitation for Persistent Pain Across the Lifespan)
Research into attentional biases and threatening, pain-related information has primarily been investigated using reaction time as the dependent variable. This study aimed to extend previous research to provide a more in depth investigation of chronic back pain and individuals’ attention to emotional stimuli by recording eye movement behavior. Individuals with chronic back pain (n = 18) were recruited from a back rehabilitation program and age and sex matched against 17 non-symptomatic controls. Participants’ eye movements were recorded whilst they completed a dot probe task, which included back pain specific threatening images and neutral images. There were no significant differences between chronic pain and control participants in attentional biases recorded using reaction time from the dot probe task. Chronic pain participants, however, demonstrated a significantly higher percentage of fixations, larger pupil diameter, a longer average fixation duration and faster first fixation to threatening compared to neutral images. They also had a significantly longer average fixation duration and larger pupil diameter to threatening images compared to control participants. The findings of this study suggest eye gaze metrics may provide a more sensitive measure of attentional biases in chronic pain populations. These findings may have important therapeutic implications for the patient and therapist.
View Full-Text
Keywords:
chronic pain; attentional biases; eye gaze
▼
Show Figures
This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited
MDPI and ACS Style
Franklin, Z.C.; Holmes, P.S.; Fowler, N.E. Eye Gaze Markers Indicate Visual Attention to Threatening Images in Individuals with Chronic Back Pain. J. Clin. Med. 2019, 8, 31. https://doi.org/10.3390/jcm8010031
AMA Style
Franklin ZC, Holmes PS, Fowler NE. Eye Gaze Markers Indicate Visual Attention to Threatening Images in Individuals with Chronic Back Pain. Journal of Clinical Medicine. 2019; 8(1):31. https://doi.org/10.3390/jcm8010031
Chicago/Turabian StyleFranklin, Zoë C.; Holmes, Paul S.; Fowler, Neil E. 2019. "Eye Gaze Markers Indicate Visual Attention to Threatening Images in Individuals with Chronic Back Pain" J. Clin. Med. 8, no. 1: 31. https://doi.org/10.3390/jcm8010031
Find Other Styles
Note that from the first issue of 2016, MDPI journals use article numbers instead of page numbers. See further details here.
Search more from Scilit