Examining Memory for Pain Intensity: Potential Moderators of Discrepancy between Daily Diary and Retrospective Reports of Pain

Retrospective reports of pain are often significantly higher than daily diary reports and may be associated with recall bias or psychosocial factors. Due to this discrepancy, daily pain report is considered more reliable. In this study we sought to replicate findings that indicate a discrepancy between retrospective and daily reports of pain and assess the moderating effects of pain catastrophizing and depressive symptoms on this difference. As a part of a randomized controlled trial, 229 adolescents with juvenile fibromyalgia (M age=15.75, SD=1.58, 90% female) completed two Visual Analog measures of pain (daily and retrospective) and psychosocial variables including the Children’s Depression Inventory-2 and Pain Catastrophizing Scale. We examined the moderating effects of depression and pain catastrophizing on the association between averaged daily and retrospective pain reports. Consistent with prior work, there was a significant difference between daily diary report (M=5.73, SD=1.34) and retrospective pain report (M=6.47, SD=1.43, t(228)=-8.17, p<.001), such that retrospective report was significantly higher. While pain catastrophizing was significantly correlated with daily report (r=.22, p=.001) and retrospective report (r=.28, p<.001), it did not moderate the relation between them (p=.84). Depressive symptoms were not correlated with daily report (r=.07, p=.33) but were significantly correlated with retrospective report (r=.45, p<.05); depressive symptoms did not moderate the relationship between the reporting methods (p=.88). Not much is known about memory biases in pediatric pain intensity. Given that depression was related to retrospective, but not daily reports, more investigation into the role of cognitive biases and mood in pain memory is warranted. Funded by the National Institutes of Health (R01AR070474 and P30AR076316).