BBS Call for Commentators: Williams: FACIAL EXPRESSION OF PAIN: AN EVOLUTIONARY ACCOUNT

[Behavioral & Brain Sciences]

       Below is a link to the forthcoming BBS target article

        FACIAL EXPRESSION OF PAIN: AN EVOLUTIONARY ACCOUNT


                                by

                           Amanda Williams


http://www.bbsonline.org/Preprints/Williams


This article has been accepted for publication in Behavioral and Brain
Sciences (BBS), an international, interdisciplinary journal providing
Open Peer Commentary on important and controversial current research in
the biobehavioral and cognitive sciences.

Commentators must be BBS Associates or nominated by a BBS Associate. To
be considered as a commentator for this article, to suggest other
appropriate commentators, or for information about how to become a BBS
Associate, please reply by EMAIL within three (3) weeks to:

                     calls at bbsonline.org

The Calls are sent to 10,000 BBS Associates, so there is no expectation
(indeed, it would be calamitous) that each recipient should comment
on every occasion! Hence there is no need to reply except if you wish
to comment, or to nominate someone to comment.

If you are not a BBS Associate, please  approach a current BBS
Associate (there are currently over 10,000 worldwide) who is familiar
with your work to nominate you. All past BBS authors, referees and
commentators are eligible to become BBS Associates. A full electronic
list of current BBS Associates is available at this location to help
you select a name:

http://www.bbsonline.org/Instructions/assoclist.html

If no current BBS Associate knows your work, please send us your
Curriculum Vitae and BBS will circulate it to appropriate Associates to
ask whether they would be prepared to nominate you. (In the meantime,
your name, address and email address will be entered into our database
as an unaffiliated investigator.)

To help us put together a balanced list of commentators, please give
some indication of the aspects of the topic on which you would bring
your areas of expertise to bear if you were selected as a commentator.

To help you decide whether you would be an appropriate commentator for
this article, an electronic draft is retrievable from the online
BBSPrints Archive, at the URL that follows the abstract below.

_______________________________________________________
FACIAL EXPRESSION OF PAIN: AN EVOLUTIONARY ACCOUNT

Amanda C de C Williams
University of London
St Thomas' Hospital
London, UK

KEYWORDS: pain; facial expression; adaptation; evolutionary psychology

ABSTRACT: This paper proposes that human expression of pain in the
presence or absence of caregivers, and the detection of pain by observers,
arise from evolved propensities. The function of pain is to demand
attention and prioritise escape, recovery and healing; where others can
help achieve these goals, effective communication of pain is required.
Evidence is reviewed of a distinct and specific facial expression of pain
from infancy to old age, consistent across stimuli, and recognizable as
pain by observers. Voluntary control over amplitude is incomplete, and
observers better detect pain which the individual attempts to suppress
than to amplify or to simulate it. In many clinical and experimental
settings, facial expression of pain is incorporated with verbal and
nonverbal-vocal activity, posture and movement in an overall category of
pain behaviour. This is assumed by clinicians to be under operant control
of social contingencies such as sympathy, caregiving, and practical help;
thus strong facial expression is presumed to constitute an attempt to
manipulate these contingencies by amplification of the normal expression.
Operant formulations support skepticism about the presence or extent of
pain, judgements of malingering, and sometimes the withholding of
caregiving and help. However, to the extent that pain expression is
influenced by environmental contingencies, "amplification" could equally
plausibly constitute release of suppression according to evolved
contingent propensities which guide behaviour. Pain has been largely
neglected in the evolutionary literature and that on pain expression, but
an evolutionary account can generate improved assessment of pain and
reactions to it.

http://www.bbsonline.org/Preprints/Williams


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                              IMPORTANT

Please do not prepare a commentary yet. Just let us know, after having
inspected it, what relevant expertise you feel you would bring to bear
on what aspect of the article. We will then let you know whether it was
possible to include your name on the final formal list of invitees.

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_______________________________________________________________________


                *** SUPPLEMENTARY ANNOUNCEMENT ***

(1) Call for Book Nominations for BBS Multiple Book Review

    In the past, Behavioral and Brain Sciences (BBS) had only been able
    to do 1-2 BBS multiple book treatments per year, because of our
    limited annual page quota. BBS's new expanded page quota will make
    it possible for us to increase the number of books we treat per
    year, so this is an excellent time for BBS Associates and
    biobehavioral/cognitive scientists in general to nominate books you
    would like to see accorded BBS multiple book review.

    (Authors may self-nominate, but books can only be selected on the
    basis of multiple nominations.) It would be very helpful if you
    indicated in what way a BBS Multiple Book Review of the book(s) you
    nominate would be useful to the field (and of course a rich list of
    potential reviewers would be the best evidence of its potential
    impact!).


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Ralph
BBS

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Ralph DeMarco
Associate Editorial Coordinator
Behavioral and Brain Sciences
Journals Department
Cambridge University Press
40 West 20th Street
New York, NY 10011-4211
UNITED STATES

bbs at bbsonline.org
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Tel: +001 212 924 3900 ext.374
Fax: +001 212 645 5960
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