European journal of pain : EJP
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Children's negatively biased pain-related memories (i.e. recalling pain as being more intense or fearful than initially reported) have been recognized as a key factor in explaining child pain development. While mechanisms underlying children's pain memory development remain poorly understood, attention biases and parent language have been implicated in conceptual models. This study examined the association between child pain-related attention and memory biases and the moderating role of parental pain and non-pain attending verbalizations. ⋯ This study on child pain memories is the first to highlight that characteristics of the social context, such as parental (non-)pain-related verbalizations, as well as factors related to the intra-individual experience of pain, such as child attention bias to pain, should be studied jointly, as they interact with each other in their effect on the emergence of negatively biased memories of painful events.