Aims The effect of experimental moderate pain induced by the tourniquet inflation around the upper limb on the recognition of pain-related words under controlled processing or automatic processing and the difference between them were investigated in this study Method 32 healthy college students aged from 18 to 22 (21.81 ± 2.24) years old including 16 males and 16 females participated in this study.The tourniquet was tied to one side upper limb of subjects lcm above Cubits horizontal grain.With tourniquet inflation, all subjects were asked to finish the Dot-probe tasks with five kinds of words (affective, sensory, positive, social threat and neutral) by contralateral hand.The tourniquet was inflated to 200 mmHg and kept this pressure until subjects completed the Dot-probe task.In experiment 1, the words were displayed for 100ms in the Dot-probe task, and the words cant be perceived by subjects.In experiment 2, the words were displayed for 1000 ms, and the words can be perceived.The reaction time and the error rate of recognition task were recorded, and the reformed McGill Pain Questionnaire (MPQ) was filled by subjects after tasks.Results Pain intensity during tasks measured by reformed MPQ showed that moderate pain was induced by tourniquet inflation to 200 mmHg (4.81 ± 1.6).The data of the reaction time with one factor of displaying time, and another factor of five kinds of words were analyzed by two-way measures analysis of variance (ANOVA).The results showed that a significant difference was found in the main effect in reaction time between controlled processing and automatic processing (P =0.027).Reaction time under automatic processing (48 l ± 65 ms) is significantly longer than that of controlled processing (464 ± 70 ms).Compared automatic processing (476 ± 63 ms) with controlled processing (454 ± 62 ms), male react more quickly (P =0.032).Such difference was not found in female.Two-way ANOVA for the error rate showed no significant difference in the main effect (P =0.169).The data of the reaction time or error rate with one factor of gender, and another factor of five kinds of words were analyzed by two-way ANOVA.The analysis shows no significant difference in the main effects for gender both under the condition of automatic processing and controlled processing.Conclusion Compared with automatic processing of recognition, a higher speed to words was induced by tourniquet pain under the condition of controlled processing, but no attentional bias to pain-related words was found.