wattsd comments on Attention control is critical for changing/increasing/altering motivation - Less Wrong

174 Post author: kalla724 11 April 2012 12:48AM

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Comment author: [deleted] 10 April 2012 08:07:53PM 1 point [-]

Comparing pain to chess and music was intriguing. Intuitively, it seems that attention to pain is qualitatively different. Pain impinges on our attentions, while the other two activities are objects of attention. On the other hand, it is certainly possible to focus on pain or distracting one self from pain. The thesis of the article suggests that by directing attention towards pain, it gets worse, while directing attention away from pain can reduce it. This seems to be a testable hypothesis. Is there any study about this?

Comment author: wattsd 10 April 2012 08:24:35PM *  1 point [-]

I'm not sure there is a study about directing attention to pain, but there is a video game being used to reduce pain, presumably by directing attention away from it.

http://www.hitl.washington.edu/research/vrpain/

Edit: From the page:

Patients often report re-living their original burn experience during wound care, SnowWorld was designed to help put out the fire. Our logic for why VR will reduce pain is as follows. Pain perception has a strong psychological component. The same incoming pain signal can be interpreted as painful or not, depending on what the patient is thinking. Pain requires conscious attention. The essence of VR is the illusion users have of going inside the computer-generated environment. Being drawn into another world drains a lot of attentional resources, leaving less attention available to process pain signals. Conscious attention is like a spotlight. Usually it is focused on the pain and woundcare. We are luring that spotlight into the virtual world. Rather than having pain as the focus of their attention, for many patients in VR, the wound care becomes more of an annoyance, distracting them from their primary goal of exploring the virtual world.