Scholars@Duke
Shan Wang

Shan Wang

Assistant Professor of Psychology at Duke Kunshan University
DKU Faculty

Selected Publications

Why can we hurt ourselves? Human agency and embodied action in the attenuation of self-induced pain.

Journal Article Pain · December 2025 AbstractSelf-initiated actions often generate sensory signals perceived to be less intense than identical signals generated externally. This phenomenon, known as sensory attenuation, is particularly robust for nonpainful tactile sensations. For pa ... Full text Cite

Older adults' double-step reaching is associated with motor imagery: A mouse-tracking task.

Journal Article Psychology and aging · September 2025 Age-related declines in motor control are well-documented. However, mixed findings are reported on the age-related changes in the ability to rapidly adjust ongoing movements in response to target perturbations. When age-related differences are observed, th ... Full text Cite

Race and gender biases in assessing pain intensity and medication needs among Chinese observers.

Journal Article Pain reports · February 2025 IntroductionPain-related decision-making can be influenced by the caregiver and sufferer's demographic factors, such as race and gender, which are commonly considered individually. However, such factors may influence pain assessment interdependent ... Full text Cite

Exploring Chronic Pain Patterns and Associations With All-Cause Dementia: Results From UK Biobank.

Journal Article The journal of pain · December 2024 The count of locations with chronic pain is widely used in research and clinical practice. However, this approach might be too simplistic to fully capture the complexity of chronic pain experiences. This study identified prevalent patterns of chronic pain ... Full text Cite

Psychological flexibility prospectively predicts COVID-19 PPE use across a two-month interval.

Journal Article Psychology, health & medicine · March 2024 Perceived susceptibility, psychological flexibility and health behaviors (PPE use, social distancing) were measured at two time points spaced 2 months apart during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic and lockdown in the U.S.A (Time 1 April 2020; Time 2 Jun ... Full text Cite

Age-related changes in motor planning for prior intentions: a mouse tracking reach-to-click task.

Journal Article Frontiers in psychology · January 2024 When we complete sequential movements with different intentions, we plan our movements and adjust ahead. Such a phenomenon is called anticipatory planning for prior intentions and is known to decline with age. In daily life activities, we often need to con ... Full text Open Access Cite

Association between individual resilience and depression or anxiety among general adult population during COVID-19: a systematic review.

Journal Article Journal of public health (Oxford, England) · November 2023 BackgroundThe coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic exacerbated depression and anxiety worldwide. Resilience is important to maintain mental health during uncertain times, but limited study has systematically reviewed its association with depres ... Full text Cite

The value of the International Association for the Study of Pain to career development: perspectives of trainee and early career members.

Journal Article Pain · November 2023 AbstractSupporting its young members has been a key priority of the International Association for the Study of Pain (IASP) for the past 5 decades. The IASP, along with its federations, chapters, and special interest groups, has provided benefits t ... Full text Cite

Inter-limb coordination in a novel pedalo task: A comparison of children with and without developmental coordination disorder

Journal Article Human Movement Science · April 2022 Children with Developmental Coordination Disorder (DCD) have been shown to have different coordination patterns on some tasks compared to their typically developing peers. However, it is unclear whether these differences are driven by the fact that typical ... Full text Cite

Predicting personal protective equipment use, trauma symptoms, and physical symptoms in the USA during the early weeks of the COVID-19 lockdown (April 9-18, 2020).

Journal Article Journal of contextual behavioral science · July 2021 The COVID-19 pandemic created a complex psychological environment for Americans. In this study, 450 MTurk workers completed measures of sociodemographic characteristics, perceived risk for COVID-19, general perceived vulnerability to disease, intolerance o ... Full text Open Access Cite

The Time Course of Facial Expression Recognition Using Spatial Frequency Information: Comparing Pain and Core Emotions.

Journal Article The journal of pain · February 2021 We are able to recognize others' experience of pain from their facial expressions. However, little is known about what makes the recognition of pain possible and whether it is similar or different from core emotions. This study investigated the mechanisms ... Full text Cite

Psychological reactions to COVID-19: Survey data assessing perceived susceptibility, distress, mindfulness, and preventive health behaviors.

Journal Article Data in brief · February 2021 The COVID-19 pandemic created a complex psychological environment for persons in America. A total of 450 USA MTurk workers completed measures of: (a) basic demographic characteristics; (b) health risk factors for COVID-19; (c) perceived susceptibility vari ... Full text Open Access Cite

Exploring attentional biases towards facial expressions of pain in men and women.

Journal Article European journal of pain (London, England) · October 2018 BackgroundInterpersonal factors may help explain why men and women differ in their perception and expression of pain. Whilst the focus is often on the person in pain, how observers respond to those in pain is important. This study explored whether ... Full text Cite

The role of spatial frequency information in the decoding of facial expressions of pain: a novel hybrid task.

Journal Article Pain · November 2017 Spatial frequency (SF) information contributes to the recognition of facial expressions, including pain. Low-SF encodes facial configuration and structure and often dominates over high-SF information, which encodes fine details in facial features. This low ... Full text Cite

The role of spatial frequency information in the recognition of facial expressions of pain.

Journal Article Pain · September 2015 Being able to detect pain from facial expressions is critical for pain communication. Alongside identifying the specific facial codes used in pain recognition, there are other types of more basic perceptual features, such as spatial frequency (SF), which r ... Full text Cite