ALTERED CONSCIOUSNESS IN FLOTATION-REST AND CHAMBER-REST: EXPERIENCE OF EXPERIMENTAL PAIN AND SUBJECTIVE STRESS

Social Behavior and Personality, 2004 by Kjellgren, Anette, Sundequist, Ulf, Sundholm, Ulla, Norlander, Torsten, Archer, Trevor

Measures of experienced pain were taken, by questioning, then every minute (which the participant marked on the horizontal line on the VAS-scale, whereby 0 indicated no pain and 100 indicated excruciating pain). Degree of "experienced stress" was estimated, by questioning, at 2, 5, 8, 10, 12, 13, 14 and 15 minutes, here too the VAS-scale was used whereby O indicated not stressed at all and 100 indicated maximum possible stress. Concurrently with the participant's estimations of experienced stress, pulse frequency and oxygen levels were measured using the pulsoxymeter. The participants had not received any information about how long the experiment could continue but rather, were instructed to carry on as long as they were able to. After 15 minutes the cuff was removed and the experiment terminated. As part of the experiment it was decided that the experimenter would terminate the experiment if any participant estimated "experienced pain" on the VAS-scale between 75-80 or more, or if some aspect of the verbal communication between the experimenter and the participant indicated that the individual was unnecessarily troubled by pain. However, this situation did not occur for any of the participants. Immediately after the cuff had been removed, the participant was required to estimate the length of time that it had remained inflated upon his arm.

On arrival at the laboratory for the third and final visit, the participant was required to complete a questionnaire containing questions about bodily pain and eventual discomfort following previous induction of pain. After this, the experiment was carried out in an identical manner to the procedure used during the participant's second visit to the laboratory except that the other REST-condition, compared to that applied in the previous visit, was presented. On completion of the experiment the participants were each thanked for their participation.

RESULTS

DATA REDUCTION

In order to facilitate the statistical analysis, the possibility of performing reduction of the data regarding experienced pain, experienced stress, pulse rate and oxygen saturation was investigated by regression analysis (enter-method) through calculating Multiple R (R).

The analyses indicated significant correlations for experienced pain following couch (R = 0.99, p = 0.002) and following flotation tank (R = 0.99, p 0.90), the mean values for the results pertaining to experienced pain, experienced stress, pulse rate and oxygen saturation in exhaled air were applied to further statistical analysis.

COMPARISON BETWEEN CHAMBER-REST AND FLOTATION-REST

In order to analyze the dependent variables, statistics with Paired Samples t-test (5% level) were used. The analyses did not indicate any significant differences between chamber-REST and flotation-REST with regard to experienced pain (p = 0.989), experienced stress (p = 0.985), pulse rate (p = 0.293), blood pressure (p = 0.476), oxygen saturation in blood (p = 0.316), estimated time for REST-treatment duration (p = 0.086), and estimated time for blood pressure cuff duration (p = 0.966). However, there was a significant difference with regard to altered state of consciousness (EDN) [t (22) = 4.88, p