Attention, distraction, and cold-pressor pain.

Compared the effects of distracting oneself from, vs attending to, the sensations produced by cold-pressor stimulation. Exp I (35 undergraduates) revealed that distraction was a better coping strategy than attention to sensations when Ss were asked to report pain threshold and tolerance. Exps II and III (75 Ss) examined the hypothesis that distraction is effective because persons hold a commonsense belief in the benefits of distraction as a coping device. Neither experiment supported the commonsense hypothesis as an explanation for Exp I's results. In Exp IV, 39 male Ss were assigned to either distraction, attention, or no-instruction conditions and asked to report their distress during a 4-min cold-pressor trial. Distraction reduced distress early in the trial, but attention to sensations was a superior strategy for the last 2 min. It is proposed that distraction and attention to sensations may be differentially effective depending on the duration of the painful stimulus. Possible mediating processes underlying the 2 strategies are discussed. (10 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)