ArticleCommunications psychology2023
Infant cries convey both stable and dynamic information about age and identity.
Article in Communications psychology, 2023. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 7 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
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Who cites it
7 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it.
- The application of machine learning for infant cries classification and pathological cries detection: A systematic review.Science progressPooled it
- Nonlinear acoustic phenomena tune the adults' facial thermal response to baby cries with the cry amplitude envelope.Journal of the Royal Society, Interface · 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
- Nonlinear phenomena in vertebrate vocalizations: mechanisms and communicative functions.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
- Age and parous-experience dependent changes in emotional contagion for positive infant sounds.Frontiers in psychology · 2024Article
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Authors and funding
11 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
What information is encoded in the cries of human babies? While it is widely recognized that cries can encode distress levels, whether cries reliably encode the cause of crying remains disputed. Here, we collected 39201 cries from 24 babies recorded in their homes longitudinally, from 15 days to 3.5 months of age, a database we share publicly for reuse. Based on the parental action that stopped the crying, which matched the parental evaluation of cry cause in 75% of cases, each cry was classified as caused by discomfort, hunger, or isolation. Our analyses show that baby cries provide reliable information about age and identity. Baby voices become more tonal and less shrill with age, while individual acoustic signatures drift throughout the first months of life. In contrast, neither machine learning algorithms nor trained adult listeners can reliably recognize the causes of crying.
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