Investigation of the Relationship Between Perceived Mental Workload and Chronic Pain

Abstract

Chronic pain is experienced by 1 in 5 adults in the United States and is often accompanied by fatigue, poor sleep quality, and psychological symptoms. These negative factors related to chronic pain are also associated with increased mental workload, particularly in the workplace. Mental workload refers to the amount of cognitive effort used by an individual to complete a task(s). The present study was designed to assess the relationship between chronic pain and perceived mental workload. Participants with and without chronic pain completed 4 variations of an N-back task (used to induce perceived mental workload at increasing levels). After completing each variation of the N-back task, participants completed the NASA-Task Load Index (TLX), a validated subjective measure of perceived workload. A mixed-repeated-measures ANOVA and Bayesian mixed-repeated-measures ANOVA were computed to assess the impact of chronic pain on perceived mental workload (as evaluated by NASA-TLX). There was an observed interaction effect of workload and chronic pain, F(3, 135) = 4.72, p = .004, η2 = .33, highlighting that potential increases in workload may affect individuals with chronic pain at a greater magnitude than individuals with no chronic pain. This relationship is important to understanding and mitigating the negative symptoms of chronic pain. Future studies should be completed to investigate further the relationship between chronic pain and mental workload, including electrophysiological measures (to assess workload more deeply and correlate with cortical activities) and measures of fatigue (to assess fatigue’s role in the relationship).