Developmental aspects of children's definitions of pain.

As part of a wider research project aimed at investigating how children think about several aspects of pain, definitions of pain used by 680 Irish schoolchildren aged 5-14 years were examined to see if a developmental pattern could be identified in the acquisition of a verbally mediated concept of pain. The results are consonant with a Piagetian developmental model, suggesting the possibility of delineating typical concepts of pain which correspond to successive stages of cognitive development.