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Factors affecting discrimination of infant cries*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 September 2008

Thomas J. Freeburg  and
Marcia Z. Lippman
Thomas J. Freeburg*
Affiliation:
Western Washington University
Marcia Z. Lippman
Affiliation:
Western Washington University
*
Thomas Freeburg, Snohomish School District, 1506 Fifth Street, Snohomish, Washington 98290, USA.
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Abstract

The effects of five factors on the sensitivity of 36 women to infant cries were studied. The variables were listener experience (none, one month, four months), age of crying infant (one month, four months), type of cry (tired, angry, hungry), cry typicality (prototypical, moderately typical) and cry length (fixed, variable). A five-way analysis of variance was performed after scores were converted to the signal detection measure of sensitivity, d′. In addition to several main effects, significant age of infant × typicality × cry type, typicality × listener experience, and typicality × cry length interactions were found. The finding of an influence of cry length provided a possible explanation for the discrepancy in results in the infant cry literature, since the better discriminated single cries of variable length were typical of those cry signals used in studies reporting successful discrimination, and the poorly discriminated 15 sec fixed-length cry sequences were typical of those used in the studies failing to find discrimination of infant cries.

Type
Articles
Information
Journal of Child Language , Volume 13 , Issue 1 , February 1986 , pp. 3 - 13
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1986

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Footnotes

*

This research is based on a Master's Thesis submitted by the first author to Western Washington University. Appreciation is expressed to the members of the thesis committee for their advice and guidance and to Patricia Freeburg, RN, for her help in procuring subjects.

References

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