The impact of maternal child- and self-oriented pain-related injustice appraisals upon maternal attention to child pain, attention to anger, and pain-attending behavior

Objectives: The current study investigated the role of maternal child- and self-oriented injustice appraisals about child pain in understanding maternal attention for child pain and adult anger cues and pain-attending behavior. Methods: Forty-four children underwent a painful cold pressor task (CPT) while their mother observed. Eye tracking was used to measure maternal attention to child pain and adult anger cues. Initial attention allocation and attentional maintenance were indexed by probability of first fixation and gaze duration, respectively. Maternal pain-attending behaviors toward the child were videotaped and coded after CPT completion. Mothers also rated the intensity of pain and anger cues used in the free-viewing tasks. All analyses controlled for maternal catastrophizing about child pain. Results: Neither child-oriented nor self-oriented injustice was associated with maternal attentional bias toward child pain. Regarding attention toward self-relevant anger cues, differential associations were observed for self- and child-oriented injustice appraisals, with maternal self-oriented injustice being associated with a greater probability of first fixating on anger and with higher anger ratings, whereas maternal child-oriented injustice was associated with enhanced attentional maintenance toward anger. Neither type of maternal injustice appraisals was associated with maternal pain-attending behavior, which was only associated with maternal catastrophizing. Conclusions: The current study sheds light on potential differential mechanisms through which maternal self- vs. child-oriented injustice appraisals may exert their impact on parent and child pain-related outcomes. Theoretical implications and future directions are discussed.