We studied the temperature behavior of the nitrile-stretching band during heating and cooling of polyacrylonitrile (PAN) and the effect of thermal treatment regimes on this behavior. The spectroscopic manifestations of nitrile group intermolecular pairing at temperatures below Tg and the polymer thermal expansion at temperatures higher than Tg were registered. A comparison of data obtained in different thermal regimes showed that the nitrile group intermolecular attraction influences both the cyclization reaction and its manifestation in the PAN infrared (IR) spectra.