Psychophysiological Assessment of Statements About Pain

A psychophysiological procedure was developed to study the interaction of physiological activity and verbal statements in pain patients. This procedure compared skin potential and heart rate changes occurring during designated baseline, anticipation, reception, processing, and responding stages of a question‐answer sequence, in 7 chronic pain patients and 7 non‐patient controls. Pain, emotional, and neutral type questions were randomly presented. It was found that the processing of pain questions produced significantly larger physiological changes in pain patients than in the non‐pain controls. Such differential psychophysiological responsivity may serve as a basis for the early recognition of chronic pain syndrome and the detection of malingering.