TY - JOUR
T1 - Different semantic and affective meaning of the words associated to physical and social pain in cancer patients on early palliative/ supportive care and in healthy, pain-free individuals
AU - Borelli, Eleonora
AU - Bigi, Sarah
AU - Potenza, Leonardo
AU - Artioli, Fabrizio
AU - Eliardo, Sonia
AU - Mucciarini, Claudia
AU - Cagossi, Katia
AU - Razzini, Giorgia
AU - Pasqualini, Antonella
AU - Lui, Fausta
AU - Ferlazzo, Fabio
AU - Cruciani, Massimiliano
AU - Bruera, Eduardo
AU - Efficace, Fabio
AU - Luppi, Mario
AU - Cacciari, Cristina
AU - Porro, Carlo Adolfo
AU - Bandieri, Elena
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© 2021 Borelli et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
PY - 2021/3
Y1 - 2021/3
N2 - Early palliative/supportive care (ePSC) is a medical intervention focused on patient's needs, that integrates standard oncological treatment, shortly after a diagnosis of advanced/metastatic cancer. ePSC improves the appropriate management of cancer pain. Understanding the semantic and emotional impact of the words used by patients to describe their pain may further improve its assessment in the ePSC setting. Psycholinguistics assumes that the semantic and affective properties of words affect the ease by which they are processed and comprehended. Therefore, in this cross-sectional survey study we collected normative data about the semantic and affective properties of words associated to physical and social pain, in order to investigate how patients with cancer pain on ePSC process them compared to healthy, pain-free individuals. One hundred ninety patients and 124 matched controls rated the Familiarity, Valence, Arousal, Pain-relatedness, Intensity, and Unpleasantness of 94 words expressing physical and social pain. Descriptive and inferential statistics were performed on ratings in order to unveil patients' semantic and affective representation of pain and compare it with those from controls. Possible effects of variables associated to the illness experience were also tested. Both groups perceived the words conveying social pain as more negative and pain-related than those expressing physical pain, confirming previous evidence of social pain described as worse than physical pain. Patients rated pain words as less negative, less pain-related, and conveying a lower intense and unpleasant pain than controls, suggesting either an adaptation to the pain experience or the role played by ePSC in improving patients' ability to cope with it. This exploratory study suggests that a chronic pain experience as the one experienced by cancer patients on ePSC affects the semantic and affective representation of pain words.
AB - Early palliative/supportive care (ePSC) is a medical intervention focused on patient's needs, that integrates standard oncological treatment, shortly after a diagnosis of advanced/metastatic cancer. ePSC improves the appropriate management of cancer pain. Understanding the semantic and emotional impact of the words used by patients to describe their pain may further improve its assessment in the ePSC setting. Psycholinguistics assumes that the semantic and affective properties of words affect the ease by which they are processed and comprehended. Therefore, in this cross-sectional survey study we collected normative data about the semantic and affective properties of words associated to physical and social pain, in order to investigate how patients with cancer pain on ePSC process them compared to healthy, pain-free individuals. One hundred ninety patients and 124 matched controls rated the Familiarity, Valence, Arousal, Pain-relatedness, Intensity, and Unpleasantness of 94 words expressing physical and social pain. Descriptive and inferential statistics were performed on ratings in order to unveil patients' semantic and affective representation of pain and compare it with those from controls. Possible effects of variables associated to the illness experience were also tested. Both groups perceived the words conveying social pain as more negative and pain-related than those expressing physical pain, confirming previous evidence of social pain described as worse than physical pain. Patients rated pain words as less negative, less pain-related, and conveying a lower intense and unpleasant pain than controls, suggesting either an adaptation to the pain experience or the role played by ePSC in improving patients' ability to cope with it. This exploratory study suggests that a chronic pain experience as the one experienced by cancer patients on ePSC affects the semantic and affective representation of pain words.
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U2 - 10.1371/journal.pone.0248755
DO - 10.1371/journal.pone.0248755
M3 - Article
C2 - 33788893
AN - SCOPUS:85103580985
SN - 1932-6203
VL - 16
JO - PloS one
JF - PloS one
IS - 3 March 2021
M1 - e0248755
ER -