from an actual academic journal published in the mid nineteen nineties

if you didn’t know already, i am a steadfast advocate of: 1. exhaustive research & 2. establishing standards. so when i came across this scholarly article which calls for standardising the “elicitation of a pain cry from infants” (for research purposes!) i knew that i had found a cause for me to rally behind. get a hot load of this:

Presently, there appears to be a lack of consensus among researchers as to the ideal methods of eliciting a pain cry from infants… For example, previous studies have elicited pain cries from infants based on a rubberband snap to the heel (Murray, et al., 1977), heel stick with a blood lancet or heel flick with a researcher’s index finger (Corwin, et al., 1992), a pinch applied to the infant’s arm or ear (Michelsson, et al.), as well as removal of electrodes used to monitor the infant’s hear rate and respiration (Wasz-Hockert 1977).

Still other studies have been less precise in reporting cry elicitation using “physical manipulation of the infant” (Zeskind, 1981), or using “standard newborn reflexes” (Lester, 1987). Certainly, future research should be directed toward developing a standardized method of cry elicitation.

personally, my vote is for the blood lancet BUT a rubberband snap to the heel does have certain merits.

__

source: “acoustic features of normal-hearing pre-term infant cry” by cacace, robb, saxman, risemberg, and koltai (1995). via