Children's memory for pain

Abstract

Although there is a rich body of research on the development of children's memory for the details of personally experienced events, relatively little is known about age-related changes in the ability to remember pain. This gap in the literature is surprising, given that studies of children's memory for painful experiences are relevant to our basic understanding of cognitive development, pain perception, and--in some situations--patient management. This article examines what is known about children's memory for pain, given its inherent importance, working from the vantage point of the literature on the development of autobiographical memory. In doing so, the authors make use of an informal information-processing framework to organize their thoughts about the acquisition, retention, and distortion of information about painful experiences. Nonetheless, the authors recognize that this framework will no doubt need to be modified to take into account the complex memory representations--containing somatosensory, affective, and contextual information--that are established after exposure to painful stimulation. After the treatment of the literature, the authors discuss its implications for the clinical management of pain in pediatric settings.