Abstract
Daily life is characterized by the need to stop, start, repeat, and switch between
multiple tasks. Here, we experimentally investigate the effects of pain, and its anticipation,
in a multitask environment. Using a task-switching paradigm, participants repeated
and switched between 3 tasks, of which 1 predicted the possible occurrence of pain.
Half of the participants received low intensity pain (N = 30), and half high intensity
pain (N = 30). Results showed that pain interferes with the performance of a simultaneous
task, independent of the pain intensity. Furthermore, pain interferes with the performance
on a subsequent task. These effects are stronger with high intensity pain than with
low intensity pain. Finally, and of particular importance in this study, interference
of pain on a subsequent task was larger when participants switched to another task
than when participants repeated the same task.
Perspective
This article is concerned with the interruptive effect of pain on people’s task performance
by using an adapted task-switching paradigm. This adapted paradigm may offer unique
possibilities to investigate how pain interferes with task performance while people
repeat and switch between multiple tasks in a multitask environment.
Key words
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Article info
Publication history
Published online: November 10, 2011
Accepted:
September 15,
2011
Received in revised form:
August 22,
2011
Received:
May 29,
2011
Footnotes
Preparation of this paper was partly supported by Grant BOF/GOA2006/001 of Ghent University and FWO project G.017807.
There are no conflicts of interest that may arise as a result of this research.
Identification
Copyright
© 2012 American Pain Society. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
