Episodic Memory and Episodic Future Thinking Across Those with and Without Chronic Pain
Description
This dataset contains information from a cross-section survey design. The study was approved by the University of Canberra Human Research Ethics Committee (Project ID: 14125). The study aimed to investigate the detail, specificity, and content of recalled personal memories and imagined hypothetical future scenarios between those with and without chronic pain. The study also aimed to investigate any associations between pain-related fear and pain catastrophising with the aforementioned characteristics of EM and EFT in the recruited chronic pain population. To measure EM and EFT, an adapted version of the autobiographical interview was used. Participants were presented with four cue words for each task (eight in total). Participants were asked to detail a personal event from their past (EM task) or future (EFT task) in relation to the cue word. The autoscoring NLP model developed by van Genugten & Schacter (2024) was used to score the internal and external details of each described event. In the data set, the average number of internal and external details elicited during the EM and EFT tasks are provided, alongside the average proportional amount of internal (episodic) detail generated (relative to total word output). Specificity of events was assessed manually in line with previous research (Quenstedt et al., 2021). In the data set, EM and EFT specificity are represented as a sum of the number of specific events recalled (EM) or imagined (EFT). The presence of negative emotion was also scored in line with (Quenstedt et al., 2021). Here, if a single event with negative emotion was recalled (EM) the participant would receive a score of 1. If they did not recall any event that had a negative emotion, they received a score of 0. This was identical for EFT. All participants also completed the fear of pain questionnaire-III and pain catastrophising scale, with summed scores for each subscale provided in the dataset. Total scores were also calculated for each measure. Participants with chronic pain provided information related to their pain by completing the short-form Mcgill pain questionnaire-II. In the dataset, the average score for the intensity of different pain qualities experienced in the last score is provided. This was considered as a measure of recent pain intensity. In this data set, we found an interaction between age and chronic pain status was associated with reduced episodic detail recalled during EM. Specifically, older individuals with chronic pain had fewer episodic details recalled during EM compared to olde rpain-free individuals. We did not observe a significant interaction for EFT (p = .056), however, we do note that a similar trend may exist should future research continue to explore this. We also found that, when considering age, chronic pain status was not associated with differences in EM and EFT specificity. We also report that rumination and helplessness were both associated with EM detail in chronic pain.
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Steps to reproduce
Steps to reproduce this dataset will be available through published journal articles.
Institutions
- University of CanberraAustralian Capital Territory, Canberra