Background and aims: Pain captures attention, interrupts ongoing tasks, and urges escape and avoidance of harm. Investigations into the effect of pain on working memory have yielded contradictory results, which may be the result of variations in tasks employed to assess working memory (WM). WM is conceptualised as a multicomponent cognitive architectural system that includes distinguishable components such as the processing and storage of visuo-spatial and phonological information. The current study investigated the effects of pain on four WM tasks differing on each of the following dimensions: 1) Input type: phonological/visuo-spatial and 2) Procedure type: processing/storage.
Methods: Sixty participants completed the WM tasks (Corsi block and digit span tests, forward and backward versions) in random order with and without pain induced via cold pressor. 
Results: Our pre-registered analysis, a 2 (pain vs. no pain) x 2 (visuo-spatial vs. phonological) x 2 (processing vs. storage) Within-Subjects ANOVA, revealed that  
pain did not affect performance on any of the WM tasks. Furthermore, the effect of pain did not differ between input type.
Conclusions: Pain did not affect performance on the four WM tasks. The effect observed among chronic pain patients may stem from more than the disruptive effect of pain alone, but rather a combination of psychological, social, and biological factors.

THE EFFECT OF PAIN ON FOUR ASPECTS OF WORKING MEMORY