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Distinguishing Feigned From Sincere Performance in Psychophysical Pain Testing
- Source :
- The Journal of Pain. 16:1044-1053
- Publication Year :
- 2015
- Publisher :
- Elsevier BV, 2015.
-
Abstract
- Self-report, the most widely used, gold standard measurement of pain, is crucial for pain research, diagnosis, and management. However, there are no accurate, reliable methods for detecting dishonesty in self-reports when there is incentive for pain deception. We introduce a novel approach to detecting pain deception by analyzing performance patterns of honest and dishonest psychophysical pain testing. Warmth sensation threshold (WST) and heat pain threshold (HPT) were measured in healthy individuals (N = 37) under 2 conditions: standard instruction (ie, provide sincere reports) and instructions to simulate intense pain (ie, provide feigned reports) with the intention of deceiving. In the feigned compared with sincere condition, participants had significantly increased WST and decreased HPT. Repeatability and variability indices were indistinguishable between conditions. In a second, separate cohort (N = 24), measurements were repeated with the addition of a sensory interference to influence task performance. When sensory interference during HPT measurement was introduced, feigned pain reports had significantly higher variability and poorer repeatability compared with sincere reports and were distinguishable from sincere reports, with high sensitivity (83%) and specificity (84%). The statistical properties of psychophysical performance under sensory interference provide a method for identifying feigned performance and could be applied to evaluations of pain malingering. Perspective This article introduces a method to detect whether individuals are being dishonest in psychophysical pain testing. The method could help clinicians to detect chronic pain malingering in contexts in which there is incentive to deceive.
- Subjects :
- Adult
Male
Pain Threshold
medicine.medical_specialty
Deception
Adolescent
media_common.quotation_subject
Lie Detection
Pain
Audiology
Developmental psychology
Young Adult
Lie detection
Malingering
Threshold of pain
Psychophysics
medicine
Humans
Pain Measurement
media_common
Analysis of Variance
Dishonesty
Perspective (graphical)
Chronic pain
Gold standard (test)
medicine.disease
Electric Stimulation
Anesthesiology and Pain Medicine
ROC Curve
Neurology
Hyperalgesia
Female
Neurology (clinical)
Psychology
Subjects
Details
- ISSN :
- 15265900
- Volume :
- 16
- Database :
- OpenAIRE
- Journal :
- The Journal of Pain
- Accession number :
- edsair.doi.dedup.....8b093da993a24b4dfa764ac7bb45510f
- Full Text :
- https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jpain.2015.07.004