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Cognitive And Psychophysiological Investigation Of Chronic Pain, Amy D. Clegg

Loma Linda University Electronic Theses, Dissertations & Projects

Using Bower’s (1981) associative network model of mood and memory, and Klinger’s theory of current concerns, it was hypothesized that the experience of chronic pain may be functionally similar to a mood state and that the chronicity of the condition may maintain it as a current concern. Specifically, it was hypothesized that chronic pain patients would not show any differences in reaction time and accuracy when making lexical decisions about pain-related, neutral, and nonwords. However, it was anticipated that chronic pain patients would show differences in physiological responding (particularly, increased skin conductance responses) when compared to controls. Results confirmed that …