Intense Suffering and a Moral Kindergarten

Over at professor Victor Reppert's blog here, he challenged atheists to come up with a specific version of the argument for evil, which spilled over into a further discussion here, where I asked this question: "Has someone actually shown that moral choice-making is qualitatively different in times of intense suffering over normal choice making?" What do you think? What is there about intense suffering or horrendous evils which purportedly improves or enhances or strengthens moral choice-making such that without this suffering we might be moral pigmies living in a moral kindergarten? Anything?