The Effects of Endurance Targets on Duration Estimation under Pain Condition

Journal of Psychological Science ›› 2014, Vol. 37 ›› Issue (1) : 16-20.

PDF(275 KB)
PDF(275 KB)
Journal of Psychological Science ›› 2014, Vol. 37 ›› Issue (1) : 16-20.

The Effects of Endurance Targets on Duration Estimation under Pain Condition

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Abstract

The Effects of Endurance Targets on Duration Estimation under Pain Condition Abstract Both duration estimation and pain have great significance for human being’s survival. According to most researchers, duration estimation is influenced by many factors, including experimental paradigms, estimation methods, and pain condition. However, most of the past researches, which examined the duration estimation under pain condition, adopted only retrospective paradigm and verbal report method. So, we first want to explore with more paradigms and estimation methods under pain condition. Experiment 1 examined the effect of pain on time duration estimation. 54 undergraduates were required to put their hands in the water and try to estimate the time duration (12 seconds). A 2(experimental paradigms, retrospective vs. prospective) ×2(estimation method, verbal report vs. duplication) ×2(water temperature, 3℃ vs. 31℃) design was taken in Exp.1. All subjects were administrated with prospective experiment and then retrospective experiment. The results showed that there were significant main effect of paradigm (F(1,44)=33.51,p<.01) and water temperature(F(1, 44) =3.84, p=.056). Prospective judgments were longer than retrospective judgments, and duration judgments were significantly shorter under pain condition than normal condition. In Exp.2, based on the evidence that subjects with certain endurance targets would underestimate the pain intensity, we want to investigate whether the endurance target would improve duration estimation under pain condition. 56 undergraduates were randomly assigned among a 2(experimental paradigms, retrospective vs. prospective) ×2(estimation method, verbal report vs. duplication) ×2(endurance target, 3 minutes vs. no certain target) design. All subjects were required to put hands in the cold water(3℃), and those in “3 minutes” group were told to try to persist 3 minutes, but the subjects in the other group were told to persist as long as they can. As in Exp.1, all subjects need to complete the duration estimation task with retrospective paradigm and then prospective paradigm. The results showed that there were significant main effect of paradigm (F(1,44)=17.02,p<.01), and the duration judgments in prospective paradigm was longer than that in retrospective paradigm. The main effect of endurance target was also significant (F(1,44)=4.09,p<.05), and the duration judgments was longer with specific target than that with no certain targets. According to results of the present experiments, the following conclusions can be made. (1) Under pain or no pain conditions, with or without certain endurance target, there are significant paradigm effects, with prospective judgments longer than retrospective judgments. (2) Duration judgments under pain condition are significantly shorter than that in no pain condition. (3) Under pain condition, subjects with endurance targets tend to estimate the duration significantly longer than those with no endurance targets. The results of this study suggest that specific endurance target may help clinical patients to cope with pain.

Key words

pain / endurance target / duration estimation / experimental paradigms / estimation methods

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The Effects of Endurance Targets on Duration Estimation under Pain Condition[J]. Journal of Psychological Science. 2014, 37(1): 16-20
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