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Distinguishing Feigned From Sincere Performance in Psychophysical Pain Testing
Journal article   Open access   Peer reviewed

Distinguishing Feigned From Sincere Performance in Psychophysical Pain Testing

Aaron Kucyi, Aviv Scheinman and Ruth Defrin
The journal of pain, v 16(10), pp 1044-1053
01 Oct 2015
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jpain.2015.07.004
PMID: 26259781
Featured in Collection :   UN Sustainable Development Goals @ Drexel
url
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jpain.2015.07.004View
Published, Version of Record (VoR)Open Access (Publisher-Specific),  Open

Abstract

lie detection Malingering pain psychophysics sensory interference
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. 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. •A method was developed to detect feigned pain using statistics of psychophysical reports.•The method detects feigned pain in healthy individuals with high sensitivity/specificity.•Sensory interference during psychophysical testing improves feigned pain detection.

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5 citations in Web of Science
5 citations in Scopus

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UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)

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#3 Good Health and Well-Being

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Collaboration types
Domestic collaboration
International collaboration
Web of Science research areas
Clinical Neurology
Neurosciences
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