Preliminary analysis of causes of infant cry

Abstract

Infant crying comprises a rhythmic pattern of cry sounds and inhalation. Unlike in adults, crying is the only means of communication for an infant. Most signal processing tools that work well for adults are not adequate in the case of infant cry sounds. Hence there is a need to develop methods for extracting features from these sounds, for better understanding. This paper describes a database collected for the analysis of infant cries vis-a-vis their causes, using spectrograms. The fundamental frequency, limited to adults, can go much higher in the case of infant cries, along with rapid changes in F0. Signal processing methods like autocorrelation and linear prediction analysis are used for analyzing the infant cry sounds and extract features like fundamental frequency, energy etc. Spectrograms providing the ground truth and information about the fundamental frequency with harmonics are examined in this preliminary analysis. An attempt is made to classify the infant cries into six categories such as pain, discomfort, ailments, emotional need for attention, hunger and cry due to manipulation.