NEWBORNS CRYING IN DIFFERENT CONTEXTS - DISCRETE OR GRADED SIGNALS

The aim of this study was to investigate whether human infants' cries show individually and contextually discriminable acoustic parameters. 20 full-term normal human newborns (aged 1 to 4 days) had their cries recorded during routine blood withdrawal (pain context) 30 min. before a scheduled feeding (hunger context) and when subjected to kinetic st imuli during neurological examination (manipulation context). Type of cries, melodic contours, F0 parameters, but not the ''macro'' trend of the start of the fundamental frequency, indicated a difference in pai n cries in the other two contexts. All the acoustic features considere d showed an individual specificity. The peak frequencies of Voiceless or partially voiced wails had the interesting property of being optimi sed as long distance signals. We hypothesised that this feature of inf ants' cries may have evolved in a time window when the infants were le ft in collective nurseries and not carried on the mothers' backs as ma intained by the traditional view.