Pain in infancy: The primacy of the social context

Abstract

With rare exception, pain is a universal personal experience. As with all sensations and their perceptions, physical pain can be seen as the end product of process that transduces the physical world into a subjective experience using physiological, cognitive, and emotional perspectives that are formed and experienced in a social context. Due to their unique developmental stage, infant pain is much more dependent on the social context, specifically the caregiver, than at any other stage in the life span. This chapter reviews evidence to suggest that Attachment Theory is an important lens in which to understand infant pain behavior. Attachment Theory demands a dyadic approach to understanding both pained infants and their caregivers. Assessing and managing infant pain through an attachment lens also acknowledges that infants are in a critical period of development in terms of developing core schemas about pain/distress and their own ability to regulate pain-related distress.