AUTHOR=Icht Michal , Wiznitser Ressis-tal Hadar , Lotan Meir TITLE=Can the Vocal Expression of Intellectually Disabled Individuals Be Used as a Pain Indicator? Initial Findings Supporting a Possible Novice Assessment Method JOURNAL=Frontiers in Psychology VOLUME=12 YEAR=2021 URL=https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/psychology/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2021.655202 DOI=10.3389/fpsyg.2021.655202 ISSN=1664-1078 ABSTRACT=
Pain is difficult to assess in non-verbal populations such as individuals with intellectual and developmental disability (IDD). Due to scarce research in this area, pain assessment for individuals with IDD is still lacking, leading to maltreatment. To improve medical care for individuals with IDD, immediate, reliable, easy to use pain detection methods should be developed. The goal of this preliminary study was to examine the sensitivity of acoustic features of vocal expressions in identifying pain for adults with IDD, assessing their feasibility as a pain detection indicator for those individuals. Such unique pain related vocal characteristics may be used to develop objective pain detection means. Adults with severe-profound IDD level (