Percepcija boli u uvjetima različite razine distrakcije
Pain Perception in Different Levels of Distraction

Summary/Abstract: The aim of the study was to test the hypothesis on the effects of distraction from pain perception as a cognitive-behavioural technique in achieving analgesia. The basic assumption was that a more distractive task will have more analgesic effects, and that this effect will be greater in a situation of less intense painful stimulation. 30 healthy students (28 female) participated in the study. Half of the participants were stimulated with electro-cutaneous intensities which were near pain threshold, and the other half with stimuli noticeably above pain threshold. During electrical stimulation all the participants were in three different situations regarding the level of distraction: control situation without distraction, first level of distraction which included parallel performance on tracking task, and second level of distraction which included parallel performance on three distraction tasks: tracking task, listening to music and backward counting. The obtained result partly confirmed the presumptions. The distraction was effective, i.e. painful stimulation was perceived as less intensive compared to the control situation, but only in the situation with three parallel distraction tasks. There was no interaction effect between distraction and stimulus intensity. Unexpectedly, there was an interaction effect of level of distraction and task duration. Distraction was more effective only in the first part of the measurement.

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