ORIGINAL ARTICLE Pain catastrophizing moderates the effects of pain-contingent task interruptions M.G.S. Schrooten 1,2 , P.A. Karsdorp 1,3 , J.W.S. Vlaeyen 1,2 1 Department of Clinical Psychological Science, Maastricht University, The Netherlands 2 Research Group Health Psychology, University of Leuven, Belgium 3 Department of Clinical Psychology and Health Psychology, Utrecht University, The Netherlands Correspondence Martien G.S. Schrooten E-mail: martien.schrooten@ppw.kuleuven.be Funding sources The reported research was conducted at the Department of Clinical Psychological Science, Maastricht University. This work was supported by the NWO Social Sciences Research Council of The Netherlands, Grant no. 453-04-003. Conflicts of interest None declared. Accepted for publication 17 December 2012 doi:10.1002/j.1532-2149.2012.00276.x Abstract Background: A prominent behavioural consequence of pain is the temporary suspension of current activities with intent to resume them later. Little is known about the effects of such pain-contingent task interruptions. This experiment examines the influence of pain-contingent interruptions on the amount of time spent performing a cognitive achievement task: We expected that people would spend more time on task when task performance was interrupted in response to pain (vs. no interruption), and that negative mood and pain catastrophizing would enhance this negative impact. Methods: Healthy volunteers read behaviour descriptions until they felt they could form a good impression. Before task performance, participants underwent a negative or positive mood induction. During the task, all participants expected painful stimulation. Half of the participants in each mood induction group received an acute (electrocutaneous) pain stimulus, resulting in a 2-min break from the task. The other participants received no sensory stimulation during task performance and their performance was not interrupted. Results: Results revealed no effect of mood on task performance (i.e., total number of descriptions read). There was, however, a significant interaction between task interruption and pain catastrophizing, indicating that participants with low levels of catastrophizing tended to read more descriptions when performance was interrupted than when not, whereas participants reporting relatively high levels of catastrophizing showed the reverse behavioural pattern. Conclusions: The impact of pain-contingent task interruptions was reversed in participants reporting relatively high levels of pain catastrophizing. Results are discussed with regard to interruption management in the context of chronic pain. 1. Introduction Research on interruptive effects of pain has largely focused on distraction by pain (Eccleston and Crombez, 1999; Van Damme et al., 2010). Besides being dis- tracted, people in pain may suspend current activities, intending to complete them later. Coping with pain often involves temporary suspension from activities to search solutions to pain (Van Damme et al., 2008). Actions interrupted by pain are assumed to urge completion, by repair/restoration of original actions (Eccleston and Crombez, 1999). Although task inter- ruption (i.e., task suspension with intent to resume the original task) is prominent in response to pain, little is known about its effects. Task interruptions, although not systematically studied in pain, have received scientific attention since the 1920s (Zeigarnik, 1927) with renewed interest 1 Eur J Pain •• (2013) ••–•• © 2013 European Federation of International Association for the Study of Pain Chapters