Summarize current views regarding infants' perception of pain.

Question

What will be an ideal response?

Answer 1

- Bizarrely, at one time people believed that infants somehow don't experience pain. In this view, a red-hot poker to the eye might cause physical damage and be mildly irritating, but in some fashion the "pain" experienced by an infant would be qualitatively different than that experienced by an adult.
- Currently, it is widely acknowledged that infants are born with the capacity to feel pain. How that pain is phenomenologically experienced by an infant is just as much a mystery as how one adult's report of "a wrenching backache" is experientially different from another adult's report of "a dull ache." Without the ability to occupy another's consciousness, we never really know for sure.
- What we do know, however, is that infant pain produces infant distress, measureable in facial expressions, heart rate, crying, and through other indicators. We also know that pain reactions differ over time. Infants learning to walk often stumble, fall, trip, and generally whack various body parts in the process, yet seem to show few ill effects. Conversely, many a child who stubs her little toe may react with wails of turmoil.