Parental emotion and pain control behaviour when faced with child’s pain: the emotion regulatory role of parental pain-related attention-set shifting and heart rate variability

The present study investigated the moderating role of parental pain-related attention-set
shifting and heart rate variability (HRV) for parental distress and pain control behaviour when
faced with their child’s pain. Participants were 54 school children and one of their parents.
Parental HRV was assessed at study commencement followed by a cued switching task
indexing parental ability to flexibly shift attention between pain-related and neutral attentional
sets. In a subsequent phase, parents observed their child perform a CPT task, allowing
assessment of parental pain control behavior (indexed by latency to stop their child’s CPT
performance) and parental distress – assessed via self-report following observation of child
CPT performance. Findings indicated that parental facilitated attentional shifting (i.e., engage)
towards a pain-related attentional set contributed to higher levels of pain control behaviour
when faced with increasing levels of chid facial display of pain. Pain control behaviour amongst
parents who demonstrated impeded attentional shifting to a pain-related attentional set was
equally pronounced regardless of low or high levels of child pain expression. Parental ability
to shift attention away (i.e., disengage) from a pain related set to a neutral set did not impact
findings. Results further indicated that whereas high levels of parental HRV buffers the impact
of child facial pain display upon parental emotional distress and pain control behaviour, low
levels of HRV constitute a risk factor for higher levels of parental distress and pain control
behaviour when faced with increased child facial pain display. Theoretical/clinical implications
and further research directions are discussed.