Cognitive biases in pain: current challenges, future directions and treatment opportunities

Cognitive biases are a core component of contemporary cognitive-affective models that try to explain pain experience, distress and disability in children and adults experiencing pain. The idea that children and adults with pain show cognitive biases for pain-related information, i.e. they selectively attend to pain-related information at the cost of other information (attentional bias), interpret ambiguous stimuli as pain-related (interpretation bias) or have biased memories for painful events (memory bias), has been particularly influential in this context. Notwithstanding the considerable progress made in the understanding of cognitive biases related to pain and threat, a number of questions remains unanswered and future challenges linger. A first challenge is to further delineate the characteristics of cognitive biases, including their content specificity and dynamics. A second challenge relates to the understanding of how cognitive biases interrelate with each other and possibly reinforce one another. A third challenge relates to the translation of findings on cognitive biases for pain into clear strategies and recommendations to optimize and evaluate pain treatment programs. Presenters in this symposium will address each of the above-mentioned lingering challenges by both critically reviewing the available evidence on cognitive biases in children and/ or adults experiencing pain and presenting novel research using innovative study set-ups and unique methods for assessing and modifying cognitive biases in children and adults experiencing pain.