Pain interrupts and demands attention. The authors review evidence for how and why this interruption of attention is achieved. The interruptive function of pain depends on the relationship between painrelated characteristics (e.g., the threat value of pain) and the characteristics of the environmental demands (e.g., emotional arousal). A model of the interruptive function of pain is developed that holds that pain is selected for action from within complex affective and motivational environments to urge escape. The implications of this model for research and therapy are outlined with an emphasis on the redefinition of chronic pain as chronic interruption. A faint tapper se is not an interesting sound; it may well escape being discriminated from the general rumor of the world. But when it is a signal, as that of a lover on the window-pane, hardly will it go unperceived. (James, 1892, p. 222) William James, in contemplation of the imminent arrival of a lover, muses on how the fate of information is not solely dependent on its sensory characteristics. Equally important to how it achieves discrimination over competing demands within the "general rumor

Research article Symptom recognition and health care seeking among immigrants and native Swedish patients with heart failure