 |
|
 | |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
||||||||||
|
Patient Expectation In addition to the role of the hypothalamic-pituitary axis (HPA), there is also evidence that suggests that patient expectation is substantially involved in the development of nausea. Among patients, there is great variation in the frequency and severity of chemotherapy-induced nausea and vomiting (NV) that cannot be accounted for by pharmacological properties of the chemotherapeutic agents (Gralla et al., 1981; Morrow et al., 1998). Understanding patients' beliefs and expectations, termed "response expectancies," concerning NV development helps us to predict and explain some of this variation. Response expectancies have been predictive of symptom report in a number of studies from a variety of experimental perspectives.
How these response
expectancies operate remains largely unknown. Kirsch suggests
that expectancies account for the placebo effect and are self-confirming
(Kirsch, 1985). This phenomenon
might, in part, be explained by the cognitive construct of schema.
According to schema theory, information (e.g. sensory data) will
be interpreted through relevant schema, meaning that an individual
expecting a symptom (e.g. nausea) will be more likely to interpret
sensations as nauseous than a individual not expecting the symptom
(Thorndyke et al., 1979).
|
||||||||||
