ArticleiScience2024
Pain cues override identity cues in baby cries.
Article in iScience, 2024. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 7 papers.
What it found
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
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Who cites it
7 citing papers in PubMed.
- Vocal encoding of heritable sociability prevails over emotions in sheep bleats.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2026Article
- The ontogeny of vocal identity in carrion crows (Corvus corone).Animal cognition · 2025Article
- Nonlinear acoustic phenomena tune the adults' facial thermal response to baby cries with the cry amplitude envelope.Journal of the Royal Society, Interface · 2025Article
- TAME Pain data release: using audio signals to characterize pain.Scientific data · 2025Article
- Nonlinear acoustic phenomena affect the perception of pain in human baby cries.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2025Article
- Old but attuned: the ability to decode babies' cries does not decline with age.Biology letters · 2025Article
- Pain cues override identity cues in baby cries.iScience · 2024Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
7 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Baby cries can convey both static information related to individual identity and dynamic information related to the baby's emotional and physiological state. How do these dimensions interact? Are they transmitted independently, or do they compete against one another? Here we show that the universal acoustic expression of pain in distress cries overrides individual differences at the expense of identity signaling. Our acoustic analysis show that pain cries, compared with discomfort cries, are characterized by a more unstable source, thus interfering with the production of identity cues. Machine learning analyses and psychoacoustic experiments reveal that while the baby's identity remains encoded in pain cries, it is considerably weaker than in discomfort cries. Our results are consistent with the prediction that the costs of failing to signal distress outweigh the cost of weakening cues to identity.
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Registered trials
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