Fashler, Samantha, R.Katz, Joel2016-11-162016-11-1610/08/2016Fashler, S., & Katz, J. (2016). Keeping an eye on pain: Investigating visual attention biases in individuals with chronic pain using eye-tracking methodology. Journal of Pain Research, 9, 551–561. http://dx.doi.org/10.2147/JPR.S1042681178-7090http://hdl.handle.net/10315/32591Attentional biases to painful stimuli are evident in individuals with chronic pain, although the directional tendency of these biases (ie, toward or away from threat-related stimuli) remains unclear. This study used eye-tracking technology, a measure of visual attention, to evaluate the attentional patterns of individuals with and without chronic pain during exposure to injury-related and neutral pictures. Individuals with (N=51) and without chronic pain (N=62) completed a dot-probe task using injury-related and neutral pictures while their eye movements were recorded. Mixed-design analysis of variance evaluated the interaction between group (chronic pain, pain-free) and picture type (injury-related, neutral). Reaction time results showed that regardless of chronic pain status, participants responded faster to trials with neutral stimuli in comparison to trials that included injury-related pictures. Eye-tracking measures showed within-group differences whereby injury-related pictures received more frequent fixations and visits, as well as longer average visit durations. Between-group differences showed that individuals with chronic pain had fewer fixations and shorter average visit durations for all stimuli. An examination of how biases change over the time-course of stimulus presentation showed that during the late phase of attention, individuals with chronic pain had longer average gaze durations on injury pictures relative to pain-free individuals. The results show the advantage of incorporating eye-tracking methodology when examining attentional biases, and suggest future avenues of research.en-USAttribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.5 Canadaattentional biases, chronic pain, avoidance, hypervigilance, dot probeArticlehttps://www.dovepress.com/journal-of-pain-research-journalhttps://www.dovepress.com/JPR-104268-attention-allocation-differs-in-people-with-pain-who-orient_081016.pdf