| Summary: | <p>Recent epidemiological studies have revealed that
as many as 78% of chronic pain sufferers come from
families in which at least one other family member has
suffered from chronic pain. This finding, along with
results of a number of analogue studies, suggests that
social modeling processes may be potent operative
factors in the development of people's perceptions and
responses to pain. The present study investigated the
effects of social modeling on children's pain
behaviours. These effects were related to parental
health status. Parent groups included chronic headache
patients and individuals having no physical or
psychiatric illness.</p>
<p>Children were exposed to an auditory stimulus task
in which a tone was presented at increasing intensity
levels. This was preceded by exposure to either a
tolerant or an intolerant model undergoing the same
procedure. It was predicted that children's responses
to the stimulus would be influenced by the modeling
condition to which they were exposed. It was further
predicted that this effect would be mediated by the
child's nonverbal receiving ability and the parent's
level of pain expressiveness. The study also compared
parent ratings of general family functioning across the
two groups, as well as the incidence of pain related
illness among their offspring.</p>
<p>Analyses revealed no main effect for modeling or
group membership. Predicted interactions between
modeling condition and children's nonverbal receiving
ability, and modeling condition and parental
expressiveness were also statistically non-significant.
However, a significant interaction between modeling and
group assignment was observed when using children's
degree of nonverbal expressiveness as a dependent
measure. This result is discussed in terms of
children's responses to stress and pain expressions of
others.</p>
<p>When comparing children of headache sufferers to
children of illness free parents it was evident that
(1) children of headache sufferers were more
somatically focused than their control counterparts,
(2) this heightened concern with their health status
may be either a reaction to, or a means of coping with
ongoing stress, and (3) this way of coping tends to be
predictive of the higher frequency of headaches
reported by these children.</p>
<p>A number of strong correlations between parents'
and their children's level of emotional adjustment are
reported. The implications of these findings for
general family health status, and characteristic coping
styles are discussed.</p>
<p>Finally, ratings of family environment were
compared across groups. No significant differences
were found. However, in the chronic headache group a
number of dimensions of family environment were found
to be related to ratings of pain severity. This result
is discussed in relation to previous discussions of
family dynamics and the psychosomatic family.</p>
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