Effect of Pain Fear on Emotional Attention Bias

Objective: Explore the attentional bias toward emotional faces in individuals with high pain fear and individuals with low pain fear. Methods: Using the Pain Fear Questionnaire to differentiate the degree of pain fear among college students,19 college students each meeting the criteria were selected as research subjects, and free browsing experiments were conducted in conjunction with eye-tracking technology. The experimental materials were positive-neutral and negative-neutral emotional face picture p airs. Results: Eye-movement indicators showed that, in terms of deviation of first fixation latency, there was a statistically significant main effect of pain fear level(F=26.7,P<0.001,η2=0.426),a statistically significant main effect of emotion type(F=6.242,P=0.017,η2=0.148),and a statistically significant interaction effect(F=13.158,P=0.001,η2=0.268). In terms of percentage of dwell time, there was a statistically significant main effect of pain fear level(F=5.22,P=0.028,η2=0.16),no statistically significant main effect of emotion type(F=0.001,P=0.974,η2=0.00),and no statistically significant interaction effect(F=0.576,P=0.4 538,η2=0.016). In terms of probability of the first fixation, there was no statistically significant main effect of pain fear level(F=0.04,P=0.846,η2=0.001)or emotion type(F=1.613,P=0.212,η2=0.043),nor was there a statistically significant interaction effect(F=1.613,P=0.212,η2=0.043). In terms of deviation of first fixation duration, there were no statistically significant main effects of pain fear level(F=1.58,P=0.217,η2=0.042)and emotion type(F=1.991,P=0.167,η2=0.052),and no statistically significant interaction effect(F=0.055,P=0.815,η2=0.002). Conclusion: Eye-movement indicators showed that both groups of subjects had a detection bias for emotional stimuli, but high pain fear subjects paid significantly less attention to negative emotional faces than to positive emotional faces. Both types of subjects had initial and overall attentional maintenance effects on emotional stimuli, but high pain fear individuals had smaller overall attentional maintenance effects on emotional stimuli.