Dataset to support the thesis 'The interactions between pain-related cognitive biases for somatosensory and visual information'

This dataset supports the Southampton Doctoral thesis entitled "The interactions between pain-related cognitive biases for somatosensory and visual information".

Experiment_2_data is the dataset underpinning an experiment which aimed to investigate the association between interpretation bias (IB) for ambiguously pain-related visual information and IB for ambiguously painful somatosensory stimuli.

More specifically, the experiment investigated the effect of interpretation bias modification (IBM) with the Ambiguous Situations Task (Jones & Sharpe, 2014) on interpretation of ambiguous somatosensory stimuli, as well as the effects of IBM on directly and indirectly measured interpretation of ambiguous, pain-related language. A novel task, the Interpretation of Ambiguous Sensations Task, was developed to assess interpretation of ambiguous somatosensory stimuli. Interpretation of ambiguous pain-related language was assessed directly with the sentence generation task and indirectly with the incidental learning task.

Experiment_3_data is the dataset underpinning an experiment which aimed to investigate whether interpretation bias modification (IBM) can modify interpretation of painful sensations for individuals with chronic pain. Based on the Process Model of Emotion Regulation, it was hypothesised that IBM may teach participants a cognitive change emotion regulation strategy which is then used in pain-related situations to inhibit negative emotions.

This study investigated whether IBM reduced negative emotional response to pain and to pain-related images, and whether this effect was mediated by reduction in pain-related interpretation bias (IB) and fear of pain. The sample for this experiment was comprised of 41 participants with chronic musculoskeletal pain and 41 healthy participants. The study took place online and participants were supported by a researcher over video call.