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The development of a self‐report measure to assess the location and intensity of pain in people with intellectual disabilities
Author(s) -
Bromley J.,
Emerson E.,
Caine A.
Publication year - 1998
Publication title -
journal of intellectual disability research
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.941
H-Index - 104
eISSN - 1365-2788
pISSN - 0964-2633
DOI - 10.1046/j.1365-2788.1998.00078.x
Subject(s) - psychology , judgement , intensity (physics) , cognition , audiology , visual analogue scale , physical therapy , developmental psychology , medicine , psychiatry , physics , quantum mechanics , political science , law
The performance of a target group of 20 people with intellectual disability (ID) and a comparison group of 20 people who did not have ID was investigated on a series of tasks involving the judgement of the location of pain (on a bodymap) and the intensity of pain (on an analogue colour scale) in response to a series of photographs of simulated painful experiences. The results of the study indicated that: (1) there were no differences between the target and comparison groups in judging pain location for 93% of test items; (2) the performance of the target group in judging pain location was stable over time; (3) people with ID rated the pain images as more intense than the comparison group on all the ‘mild’ pain stimuli and 36% of the ‘severe’ pain stimuli; (4) the performance of the target group in judging pain intensity was logically consistent for 65% of comparisons (clear trends towards significance being apparent for a further 10% of items); (5) the performance of the target group in judging pain intensity was stable over time; and (6) the performance of the target group was unrelated to indicators of cognitive ability.