Pain
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Randomized Controlled Trial Clinical Trial
Effects of exposure on perception of pain expression.
The present study evaluated the effects of exposure to facial expression of pain, on observers' perceptions of pain expression. Thirty-one male and 49 female observers judged 1-s video excerpts in a signal detection paradigm. The excerpts showed facial expressions of shoulder-pain patients displaying no pain or moderate pain. ⋯ There was a linear relationship between the density of exposure to strong pain and observers' response criteria: greater exposure was associated with more conservative decisions. On average, participants showed very high levels of sensitivity to pain expression, with women significantly outperforming men. Results are discussed in terms of their implications for pain judgments of health care professionals, adaptation-level theory, and the psychophysical method of selective adaptation.