Adult responses to cries of low and high risk infants

Abstract

Thirty parents and 30 nonparents were asked to select on a questionnaire what they considered to be appropriate responses to taperecorded pain cries elicited from 16 2-day-old infants. Half of the cries were from healthy, low-risk infants, and half were from healthy infants at high risk due to high numbers of nonoptimal obstetric conditions. The cries from the high-risk infants elicited from parents, but not from nonparents, responses that were intended as more “tender and caring” and more “immediately effective at terminating the crying” than the cries from the low-risk infants. Similarly, responses by parents, but not by nonparents, to high-risk infant cries were more consistent than to low-risk infant cries. The classification of modal responses into functional categories showed that 21 of 30 parents gave contact-confort kinds of responses to the cries of high-risk infants, while none gave undirected responses. Although the differential cry features characteristic of the high-risk infant have traditionally been used to support the differential diagnosis of central nervious system pathology, these findings were interpreted to support a more functional perspective of the cries of the risk infant.