Biomedical subjects

B Goodenough

Publications and source records attributed to B Goodenough.

5 recordsLinked to original sources

PubMed1999

Unravelling age effects and sex differences in needle pain: ratings of sensory intensity and unpleasantness of venipuncture pain by children and their parents.

Age and sex differences were investigated in children's self-report of venipuncture pain. Equal numbers of boys and girls aged 3-15 years (n = 110) made separate ratings of the intensity and unpleasantness of their needle pain, using a paired Visual Analogue Scale (VAS) technique. The parents of these children used the same method to give ratings of predicted pain and unpleasantness before the needle, as well as ratings based on observing their child during the needle. Results showed that, across age, children's intensity and unpleasantness scores were highly correlated (r = 0.78), and that both of these ratings decreased with increasing age. Analyses of covariance showed that, with the variance in the unpleasantness ratings accounted for, a significant age main effect persisted for the intensity ratings (scores decreasing with increasing age), with no effect of sex. In the corollary analysis, with intensity scores entered as a covariate, unpleasantness ratings showed no main effect of age, but a significant main effect of sex emerged: girls' ratings of pain unpleasantness, when averaged across age, were significantly higher than boys'. The interaction between age and sex was explored in analysis of the relative difference between intensity and unpleasantness ratings. The results indicated that, from approximately 8-years of age, children (especially girls) gave significantly higher ratings of unpleasantness than sensory intensity of needle pain. Prior to the age of 8 years, children tended to give equivalent ratings of intensity and unpleasantness, with no evidence of a sex difference. The agreement between parental and children's ratings was higher for parents' observed, as opposed to predicted, scores, especially for pain intensity, with no systematic influence of the child's age and sex. In conclusion, it is suggested that age effects in children's self-report of needle pain are predominantly manifest in ratings of sensory intensity, whilst sex effects are predominantly manifest in ratings of an affective (unpleasantness) dimension. It is argued that both age and sex differences are largely the function of pain reporting variables, rather than reflecting fundamental age or sex based variance in nociceptive processing.

Adolescent↗

PubMed1999

A comparison of the Faces Pain Scale and the Facial Affective Scale for children's estimates of the intensity and unpleasantness of needle pain during blood sampling.

To what degree can facial expression scales help children differentiate between the sensory and emotional aspects of the pain experience? This study examined the relationship between children's ratings on the Faces Pain Scale (an intensity measure), the Facial Affective Scale (an affective measure), and a paired mechanical visual analogue (MVAS) method for measuring the intensity and unpleasantness of pain. It was predicted that ratings on the Faces Pain Scale should correlate best with the MVAS measure of pain intensity rather than unpleasantness. Likewise, ratings on the Facial Affective Scale should correlate best with the MVAS measure of pain unpleasantness (assumed to reflect an emotional dimension) rather than intensity. Eighty children scheduled for blood sampling were selected in two age groups: 4 to 6, and 7 to 10 years. Children rated needle pain using each pain scale. As hypothesized, ratings on the Faces Pain Scale correlated more highly with the MVAS ratings for intensity (r =0.77) than for unpleasantness (r =0.52). A smaller reverse finding was confirmed for the Facial Affective Scale which correlated more highly with the MVAS for unpleasantness (r =0.64) than for intensity (r =0.51). Factor analysis indicated that 'pain dimension' (intensity vs affect) was a relatively weak factor as compared with shared instrument variance (two MVAS vs two face scales). No systematic age effects were observed. In conclusion, the Faces Pain Scale and the Facial Affective Scale may partly measure different aspects of the pain experience in children, although it remains to be determined to what degree the obtained differences are clinically meaningful. Copyright 1999 European Federation of Chapters of the International Association for the Study of Pain.

Journal Article↗

PubMed1997

An investigation of the placebo effect and age-related factors in the report of needle pain from venipuncture in children.

To examine the potential role for a placebo cream in reducing reported needle pain severity in children, and the impact of age-related factors on pain self-report, a convenience sample of 117 children scheduled for venipuncture were randomly assigned to one of three treatments: (a) placebo cream with the suggestion that it might help reduce needle pain, (b) placebo cream with no indication as to the cream's purpose, and (c) no cream (control group). In allocation to treatment, children were stratified by age group, (3-7, 8-11, 12-17 years). They rated their needle pain severity (both predicted and reported) using the Faces Pain Scale, and rated their anxiety about the procedure using the Children's Anxiety and Pain Scale. Children in the cream groups were also asked whether they thought the cream had helped. Using video-tapes, an independent observer, blind to the placebo manipulation, rated each child's reaction to the needle. For the two groups receiving cream, 83% of those children told it might help stated that they believed it did, as compared with only 33% of children who received the cream but were told nothing of its purpose. These beliefs, however, were not reflected in self-report ratings of pain which showed no statistically significant treatment effect. Similarly, children who gave higher preprocedural anxiety ratings were no more likely to report less pain as a result of receiving the cream. There was, however, a treatment effect on the observer's ratings: children receiving cream plus suggestion were assigned significantly lower ratings of pain-related behaviour than those children who received the cream alone. While venipuncture was associated with only mild levels of pain, younger children, irrespective of treatment group, did report more pain than older children. Hierarchical regression analysis indicated that 60% of the variance in self-reported pain severity scores could be accounted for by how much the child thought the needle would hurt, how anxious the child was about receiving the needle, gender (higher pain ratings associated with girls), and estimated body surface area (higher pain ratings associated with smaller bodies). We conclude that the efficacy of placebo treatments for needle pain in children may depend on the suggestion of a possible benefit rather than upon treatment application per se.

Adolescent↗

PubMed1997

Gradients as visual primitives.

Following J. J. Gibson (1950), it is implicitly assumed in the literature that texture gradients are directly available as perceptual primitives. Yet, the depth response to compression gradients is poor compared with gradients of linear perspective. This may indicate that mechanisms for directly detecting the differential structure that constitutes a compression gradient do not exist. We tested this hypothesis outside the context of depth perception by measuring the speed with which participants could detect a gradient anomaly as a function of the number of elements in the gradient. Only in the case of linear perspective did anomalies "pop out." This was attributable to the emergent feature of alignment of the ends of the elements forming the gradient rather than the direct detection of its differential structure. It is argued that gradients are not perceptual primitives and that the poor depth response to compression in a variety of context (motion parallax, stereo, and perspective) therefore is not surprising.

Adult↗

PubMed1997

Pain in 4- to 6-year-old children receiving intramuscular injections: a comparison of the Faces Pain Scale with other self-report and behavioral measures.

OBJECTIVE: The main objective was to compare the utility of the Faces Pain Scale (Bieri et al., 1990) with three alternative self-report measures of pain intensity in children, as well as with pain ratings based on observations of the child's behavior. DESIGN: Fifty children used 4 self-report scales to rate the severity of needle pain from routine immunization. Using videotapes, the child's pain-related behavior was coded in detailed fashion, and a subset of the sample were also rated globally by 60 registered pediatric nurses. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES: Faces Pain Scale; Poker Chip Tool; Visual Analogue Toy; Verbal Rating Scale; behavioral checklist (scoring observable facial, motor, verbal and vocal reactions). RESULTS AND CONCLUSIONS: The Faces Pain Scale was simple to use, readily understood by the children, and showed a realistic distribution of scores with respect to the type of pain being measured. With the exception of verbal reactions (which were not meaningfully related to self-report), observer ratings based on detailed coding of the child's behavior correlated only poorly to moderately well with self-report scores (r = .39 to r = .58). Similarly, although confident in their judgments, the nurses' ratings showed only moderate agreement with those of the children. In estimating the child's pain, all observers appeared to appropriately weigh changes in the child's facial behavior, which showed evidence of being the most sensitive behavioral index to the intensity of short sharp (needle) pain in 4 to 6 years olds.

Child↗