Chronic pain is a serious public health problem that has grown exponentially in recent years, which is why it has received the attention of numerous researchers. Most of the studies in the field of chronic pain have focused on care as a mediating variable on the perception of painful stimuli and emotions. Nevertheless, there are very few studies that have gone in the opposite direction. This study’s aim is therefore to analyse the impact of emotional variables (anxiety and depression), the rating of pain, and age on vigilance processes in a sample of patients with chronic pain. To do so, the attentional performance of a cohort of 52 patients with chronic pain was measured through the use of a modified dot-probe task. Furthermore, all the participants were evaluated using the following self-report measures: Beck’s Depression Inventory-II (BDI-II), the McGill Pain Questionnaire, and the Pain Anxiety Symptoms Scale-20 (PASS-20). Stepwise multiple linear regression analysis revealed a significant negative correlation between the pain rating index and the number of mistakes the participants made during the attention test. There was also a positive and significant correlation with age and another negative and significant correlation with cognitive anxiety regarding the overall performance times during the undertaking of the experimental task. These results point to the importance of a more in-depth understanding of the impact that the emotional variables and other variables such as age have on attentional processes and the rating of pain. Finally, the discussion focuses on the implications these results could have for clinical practice or for future research studies in this field.

中文翻译：

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警惕任务中认知焦虑和疼痛等级对护理过程的影响：年龄扮演的重要角色

慢性疼痛是一个严重的公共卫生问题，近年来呈指数增长，这就是为什么它引起众多研究人员关注的原因。慢性疼痛领域的大多数研究都将注意力集中在作为疼痛刺激和情感感知的中介变量的护理上。然而，很少有研究朝相反的方向发展。因此，本研究的目的是分析情绪变量（焦虑和抑郁），疼痛等级和年龄对慢性疼痛患者样本中警惕过程的影响。为此，通过使用改良的点探针任务测量了52名慢性疼痛患者的注意力表现。此外，所有参与者均通过以下自我报告评估方法进行了评估：贝克抑郁量表II（BDI-II），麦吉尔疼痛问卷和疼痛焦虑症状量表20（PASS-20）。逐步多元线性回归分析显示，疼痛等级指数与参与者在注意力测试过程中犯的错误数量之间存在显着的负相关性。在执行实验任务的过程中，总体表现时间与年龄呈正相关，与认知焦虑呈负相关。这些结果表明，必须更深入地了解情绪变量和其他变量（例如年龄）对注意力过程和疼痛等级的影响。最后，讨论的重点是这些结果可能对该领域的临床实践或未来研究产生的影响。