Selective Attention, Resilience and Perceived Stress in The Arabic-Speaking Population with Chronic Pain

  • Ahmad Abudoush

Student thesis: Phd

Abstract

Chronic pain (CP) is one of the most common conditions worldwide. The prevalence of CP is even higher among the Arabic population. CP adversely impacts different aspects of the sufferer’s life. Previous literature found that attentional biases in people with CP affect the link between CP and attentional bias, which has not been explicitly investigated among the Arabic population. Further, the findings have been inconsistent in the wider literature, so the evidence should be re-examined. Thus, three studies were conducted to strengthen the evidence in this field. All studies included in this thesis were preregistered and used open-science tools. Furthermore, the current evidence was first investigated through a systematic review and meta-analysis that included only studies with relatively large sample sizes (Chapter 3). The systematic review also included a table mapping processes onto models, which specify the different attentional processes and how these are interpreted by existing theoretical models in this space. The second experimental (Chapter 4) study was conducted due to the absence of previous evidence in the CP-attention field in the Arabic population. Attentional biases were assessed among CP individuals compared to healthy controls using two selective attention tasks; the Posner spatial cueing task and the Emotional Stroop task using pain-related words. Also, resilience and perceived stress levels were measured. Examining a later time point in the cueing task meant that the experiment revealed differences between the groups in when they disengaged their attention from different cue types. The results showed that individuals with CP disengaged early from sensory pain-related information relative to other cue types, as revealed by the inhibition of return (IOR) effect. Resilience extreme values moderated attention performance on the Posner task. Participants with CP who gave extra consent for a semi-structured interview were engaged in a one-to-one exploration of their daily attention experiences, experiences of exposure to pain-related information in the experiment, and opinions about possible coping and managing strategies (Chapter 5). Participants provided rich data and suggestions involving personal CP-related attention experiences, coping experiences and more public policymaker-related recommendations. In conclusion, the studies conducted enhanced re-organising the evidence available around reaction time tasks in the general CP-attention field. Together, the outcomes provided preliminary evidence that attention difficulties and related biases are important in maintaining CP among Arabic individuals.
Date of Award31 Dec 2023
Original languageEnglish
Awarding Institution
  • The University of Manchester
SupervisorEllen Poliakoff (Supervisor), Nusrat Husain (Supervisor) & Maria Panagioti (Supervisor)

Keywords

  • Posner spatial cueing task
  • Inhibition of return
  • Emotional Stroop task
  • Attention processes
  • Attention-chronic pain theoretical models
  • Stimulus onset asynchrony
  • Chronic pain
  • Experimental Psychology
  • Arabic
  • Selective attention
  • Resilience
  • Attentional bias
  • Perceived stress
  • Reaction time tasks

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