“How did that feel”: Managing and monitoring pain in cognitive neuroscience experiments

• In Event: The continued relevance of ethnomethodological studies of science and mathematics for STS

Abstract

Laboratory studies in STS have traditionally focused on the hard sciences; physics, biology and the like. In contrast, experimental psychology has been relatively neglected. The present research continues the rich tradition of ethnomethodological lab studies (e.g. Lynch, 1985; Sormani, 2014) and examines cognitive neuroscience experiments using electroencephalogram (EEG) and transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) technologies as objects of study in their own right. The study draws on ethnographic observations and approximately 42 hours of video recordings of experiments from three laboratories in Asia and Australasia as data. A key topic that emerged from the data is how a concern for managing any pain or discomfort subjects may experience is a practically relevant matter that pervades most aspects of experiments in this field (e.g. their planning, design and undertaking).
This study offers an ethnomethodological respecification of “pain”. Instead of viewing it as an internal physio-psychological state, the study focuses on how pain and discomfort figure as practical concerns in psychologists’ situated work. The study presents two main findings. First, I focus on the training of novice experimenters in the correct techniques to lessen the chances of subjects’ discomfort. In particular, the role of embodied demonstration, correction and “checking on” participants is emphasized. Second, I document the different ways that pain is dealt with in situ in experiments proper.

Authors

• David Matthew Edmonds, The Chinese University of Hong Kong

• David Matthew Edmonds, The Chinese University of Hong Kong