Information processing biases among chronic pain patients and ankylosing spondylitis patients: the impact of diagnosis.

The aim of this research was to explore the impact that diagnostic status has on information processing biases among chronic pain (CP) and ankylosing spondylitis (AS) patients. AS patients, CP patients, and healthy hospital staff controls, completed a questionnaire and short computer task. During the computer task participants endorsed sensory, depression, illness, and neutral adjectives, following a cue question (which facilitated encoding of the adjectives in relation to the self). They were then asked to recall the adjectives in a surprise memory task. Diagnosed CP patients demonstrated a recall bias away from depression related stimuli, whilst the non-diagnosed CP patients did not. The results also suggest an association between receipt of a diagnosis and better psychological outcome in terms of information processing biasing. It was questioned whether the presence of a diagnosis among CP patients who are not currently depressed may protect or 'buffer' them against cognitive biasing towards classic depression related stimuli. The diagnosed AS group showed a bias towards sensory stimuli, perhaps reflecting the presence of an enduring and over-riding pain schema. The non-pain control group also displayed a sensory bias, which was attributed to a frequency effect as a result of working in an environment where they were regularly exposed to sensory language. The results are discussed in relation to existing literature in this area and implications for clinical practice are provided.