Assessment of infant cry: Acoustic cry analysis and parental perception

Abstract

Infant crying signals distress to potential caretakers who can alleviate the aversive conditions that gave rise to the cry. The cry signal results from coordination among several brain regions that control respiration and vocal cord vibration from which the cry sounds are produced. Previous work has shown a relationship between acoustic characteristics of the cry and diagnoses related to neurological damage, SIDS, prematurity, medical conditions, and substance exposure during pregnancy. Thus, assessment of infant cry provides a window into the neurological and medical status of the infant. Assessment of infant cry is brief and noninvasive and requires recording equipment and a standardized stimulus to elicit a pain cry. The typical protocol involves 30 seconds of crying from a single application of the stimulus. The recorded cry is submitted to an automated computer analysis system that digitizes the cry and either presents a digital spectrogram of the cry or calculates measures of cry characteristics. The most common interpretation of cry measures is based on deviations from typical cry characteristics. Another approach evaluates the pattern across cry characteristics suggesting arousal or under-arousal or difficult temperament. Infants with abnormal cries should be referred for a full neurological evaluation. The second function of crying--to elicit caretaking--involves parent perception of the infant's needs. Typically, parents are sensitive to deviations in cry characteristics, but their perception can be altered by factors in themselves (e.g., depression) or in the context (e.g., culture). The potential for cry assessment is largely untapped. Infant crying and parental response is the first language of the new dyadic relationship. Deviations in the signal and/or misunderstanding the message can compromise infant care, parental effectiveness, and undermine the budding relationship. (c) 2005 Wiley-Liss, Inc. MRDD Research Reviews 2005;11:83-93.

Neural circuits underlying crying and cry responding in mammals

“…Contextually, human infants also produce extensive vocalizations when distressed or separated, and most observers readily accept that these sounds comprise a bout of 'crying.' Careful analysis of crying in human infants has shown that, while there is variability in the acoustic structure of cries according to the level of distress and some evidence in support of individual differences, the attributes that make up cry sounds are readily agreed upon and have been extensively documented in the literature (reviewed, e.g., by [51] and [111]). It seems reasonable to adopt a similar approach to the sounds of non-human mammalian infants, wherein the category of vocalizations made by distressed or separated infants would also be referred to as 'crying.'…”

“…In humans, where crying has long been a subject of interest in the developmental psychology and pediatric literature, e.g. [51], [111] and [119], the responsiveness of the mother to an infant's cry has been studied in detail. In non-human primates, playback studies have shown that a squirrel monkey mother recognizes its infant, based solely on the individual acoustic characteristics of its cries [115].…”

Physiological and self-report responses of parents of children with autism spectrum disorder to children crying

“…The signs and symptoms of ASD vary widely, especially the child's social communication development which is important for spotting early signs of ASD. Recently, there has been an increasing interest in vocal development of children with ASD and typically developing (TD) children, in particular crying (Esposito, Nakazawa, Venuti, & Bornstein, 2013;Esposito, Venuti, & Bornstein, 2011;Esposito & Venuti, 2009b, 2010bFort & Manfredi, 1998;LaGasse, Neal, & Lester, 2005;Manfredi, Bocchi, Orlandi, Spaccaterra, & Donzelli, 2009;Oller et al, 2010;Orlandi, Manfredi, Bocchi, & Scattoni, 2012;Reyes-Galaviz, Cano-Ortiz, & Reyes-García, 2008;Sheinkopf, Iverson, Rinaldi, & Lester, 2012;Venuti et al, 2012). Several studies reported that children with ASD express atypical patterns of distress vocalization such as higher fundamental frequency (f0),…”

Application of Pattern Recognition Techniques to the Classification of Full-Term and Preterm Infant Cry

“…A unidirectional microphone (Shure SM58; Shure Inc. Chicago, IL) was positioned at a fixed distance (25 cm 31,32 A CU is defined here as a high-energy voiced frame lasting at least 260 ms. This choice comes from literature where different time lengths are considered for CUs, ranging from 60 to 500 ms. 21,[33][34][35][36] In fact, CUs of very short duration do not allow the assessment of some relevant features such as their melodic shape.…”

“…Thus, for classification, the same number of 1662 CUs was used for both groups, randomly selected in the TN group. On each CU, the following 22 attributes (parameters) that gained great scientific interest in the last years 31,33,41 were estimated (CU length is given in seconds, values concerning F 0 -F 3 in Hz): CU length, F 0 median, F 0 mean, F 0 standard deviation (F 0 std), F 0 minimum (F 0 min), F 0 maximum (F 0 max), number of estimated F 0 values,…”