Infant Cry Research Articles

Childminder knowledge of shaken baby syndrome and the role played by childminders in prevention: An observational study in France

BackgroundShaken baby syndrome (SBS) triggers negative short- and long-term outcomes. In France, registered childminders are the principal source of daycare. They may encounter SBS imparted by caregivers or simply excessive infant crying. The aim of the study was to explore childminder knowledge on SBS, the source of information, the responses to infant crying, how childminders perceived their roles in terms of caregiver SBS prevention, and the factors associated with a good knowledge of SBS. MethodsThe participants were registered childminders working in the French department of Gironde who had email accounts. This observational study employed an anonymous online questionnaire distributed by the maternal and child health services unit of the Gironde department over 5 weeks from 16 September 2021. Data on childminder characteristics, knowledge on SBS, responses to infant crying, and perceptions of their roles in SBS prevention were collected. The knowledge score ranged from 0 (all wrong answers) to 30 (all correct answers). ResultsA total of 779 registered childminders participated; 43.9 % had learnt about SBS during their initial training and 75 % before (other training) or after initial training. The median knowledge score was 19/30 (interquartile range [16; 21]). A higher educational level, previous other professional experience, training on SBS, and responsibility for few children were associated with higher scores. Ten reported that they did not advise caregivers who complained of infant crying. ConclusionChildminders require training on SBS and SBS prevention.

Multi-modal analysis of infant cry types characterization: Acoustics, body language and brain signals

BackgroundInfant crying is the first attempt babies use to communicate during their initial months of life. A misunderstanding of the cry message can compromise infant care and future neurodevelopmental process. MethodsAn exploratory study collecting multimodal data (i.e., crying, electroencephalography (EEG), near-infrared spectroscopy (NIRS), facial expressions, and body movements) from 38 healthy full-term newborns was conducted. Cry types were defined based on different conditions (i.e., hunger, sleepiness, fussiness, need to burp, and distress). Statistical analysis, Machine Learning (ML), and Deep Learning (DL) techniques were used to identify relevant features for cry type classification and to evaluate a robust DL algorithm named Acoustic MultiStage Interpreter (AMSI). ResultsSignificant differences were found across cry types based on acoustics, EEG, NIRS, facial expressions, and body movements. Acoustics and body language were identified as the most relevant ML features to support the cause of crying. The DL AMSI algorithm achieved an accuracy rate of 92%. ConclusionsThis study set a precedent for cry analysis research by highlighting the complexity of newborn cry expression and strengthening the potential use of infant cry analysis as an objective, reliable, accessible, and non-invasive tool for cry interpretation, improving the infant-parent relationship and ensuring family well-being.

Bbcry, a lightweight deep learning model for infant cry classification

Babies who can’t communicate through language use crying as a way to express themselves. By identifying the unique characteristics of their cries, parents can quickly meet their needs and ensure their health. This study aimed to create a lightweight deep learning model called Bbcry to classify the cries of babies and determine their needs, such as hunger, pain, normal, deafness, or asphyxia. The model was trained using the Chillanto dataset and underwent three stages of development. Initially, the Wav2Vec 2.0 model was utilized as a teacher for the Knowledge Distillation (KD) method and applied to the transformer and prediction layers to reduce the number of required parameters. Then, a projection head layer was added and linked to the transformer layers to control their impact on the Wav2Vec 2.0 model. This resulted in the first version of the Bbcry model with an accuracy of 93.39% and an F1-score of 87.60%. Finally, the number of transformer layers was reduced to create the Bbcry-v4 model with only 9.23 million parameters, which used only 10% of the parameters of Wav2Vec 2.0 while only slightly reducing accuracy and F1-score. The study concludes with a software demonstration that shows the proposed model’s ability to accurately recognize and determine the needs of infants based on their cries.

CNN‐SCNet: A CNN net‐based deep learning framework for infant cry detection in household setting

AbstractInfants are vulnerable to several health problems and cannot express their needs clearly. Whenever they are in a state of urgency and require immediate attention, they cry, which is a form of communication for them. Therefore, the parents of the infants always need to be alert and keep continuous supervision of their infants. However, parents cannot monitor their infants all the time. An infant monitoring system could be a possible solution to monitor the infants, determine when the infants are crying, and notify the parents immediately. Although many such systems are available, most cannot detect infant cries. Some systems have infant cry detection mechanisms, but those mechanisms are not very accurate in detecting infant cries because the mechanisms either include obsolete approaches or machine learning (ML) models that cannot identify infant cries from noisy household settings. To address this limitation, in this research, different conventional and hybrid ML models were developed and analyzed in detail to find out the best model for detecting infant cries in a household setting. A stacked classifier is proposed using different state‐of‐the‐art technologies, outperforming all other developed models. The proposed CNN‐SCNet's (CNN‐Stacked Classifier Network) precision, recall, and f1‐score were found to be 98.72%, 98.05%, and 98.39%, respectively. Infant monitoring systems can use this classifier to detect infant cries in noisy household settings.

Parenting circuit triggered by infant cries.

Parenting circuit triggered by infant cries.

Infant cries convey both stable and dynamic information about age and identity

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.

MONITORING OF INFANT CRYING USING ML

This study focuses on the creation of a system for machine learning model designed, monitor, detect, and classify the underlying reasons behind infant crying. Leveraging acoustic features, the model will differentiate between various causes, including hunger, discomfort, pain, and more, with the goal of providing real- time insights for caregivers and healthcare professionals. This innovative technology aims to enhance infant care by facilitating early detection and appropriate responses to the infant's needs, ultimately contributing to the well-being and overall health of newborns and reducing caregiver stress. Keywords: Machine learning, Acoustic analysis, Infant cry, MFCC, KNN, python_speech_features, Django, MySQL.

Maternal depressive symptoms and affective responses to infant crying and laughing.

Depressive symptoms are common in the postpartum period and can affect mother-infant interaction. To better understand the role of depressive symptoms in the mother-infant interchange, this study examined whether maternal depressive symptoms are associated with self-reported, physiological, and facial expressive responses to infant crying and laughing sounds. A nonclinical sample was used, consisting of 101 mothers (Age M = 30.88 years, 33% scored 7 or higher on the Edinburgh Postnatal Depression Scale) with a young child. Mothers were exposed to standard infant crying and laughing sounds. Affect, perception of crying and laughing, intended caregiving responses, skin conductance level reactivity, and facial expressive responses to infant crying and laughing were measured. Higher levels of depressive symptoms were associated with more self-reported negative affect in general and a more negative perception of infant crying. Depressive symptoms were not associated with intended caregiving responses and physiological responses to infant crying. Infant laughing increased self-reported positive affect and happy facial expressions in mothers with all levels of depressive symptoms. Higher levels of depressive symptoms were associated with higher sad facial expressivity in general. Depressive symptoms were not related to positive perception of infant laughing, intended caregiving responses, and physiological responses to infant laughing. The findings suggest that mothers who score high on depressive symptoms send subtle facial cues showing sadness, which may overshadow happy facial expressions during infant laughing and may affect mother-infant interaction. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).

“Because of mchango, I give my baby gripe water so he sleeps and stops crying”: Exclusive breastfeeding and parents’ concerns about colic-like symptoms in infants under 6 months in Lake Zone, Tanzania

BackgroundEffective social and behavior change strategies for exclusive breastfeeding (EBF) rely on understanding how families interpret infant behavior and provide care. Little research thoroughly explores household use of non-prescribed medicine for infants under 6 months in rural Tanzania, which can interrupt EBF and may have other harmful unintended effects.
 AimTo explore parents’ use of non-prescribed medicine in response to infants’ colic-like symptoms during the EBF period.
 MethodsWe conducted thematic analysis of a series of qualitative, semi-structured interviews with 36 mothers and 30 fathers of infants 0-6 months in Lake Zone, Tanzania. Here, we focus on emergent themes related to concerns about colic-like symptoms and global implications for public health practitioners.
 ResultsParents reported concerns about excessive crying and perceived infant abdominal pain, attributed to a potentially serious disease state locally known as mchango. Most parents gave non-prescribed medicines (e.g. gripe water, oral traditional medicine, and/or other commercial medicines) to treat or prevent mchango and associated symptoms, often including infant crying. After receiving supportive counselling on soothing techniques, most were willing to avoid giving non-prescribed medicines. Some reported continued challenges attributed to mchango symptoms, namely inconsolable crying.
 ConclusionWhile symptoms of mchango reported in this study overlapped with colic symptoms, literature in Tanzania suggests, in some cases, mchango is perceived to have spiritual origins and potentially be dangerous if left untreated. Empathetic counseling can offer parents knowledge and skills to manage colic-like symptoms without using non-prescribed medicines. Health workers need clear messages and training on risks of non-prescribed medicines and Tanzanian legislation banning its promotion and distribution.

Longitudinal changes in attention bias to infant crying in primiparous mothers.

Infant stimuli attract caregiver attention and motivate parenting behavior. Studies have confirmed the existence of attentional bias toward infant face stimuli; however, relatively little is known about whether attentional bias exists for infant cry stimuli, which are as important as faces in child-rearing situations. Furthermore, scarce longitudinal evidence exists on how attentional bias toward infant crying changes through the postpartum period. In the present study, we conducted an experiment to assess bias toward infant crying at two postpartum time points: at Time 1 (Mean = 75.24 days), 45 first-time mothers participated and at Time 2 (Mean = 274.33 days), 30 mothers participated. At both time points, the mothers participated in a Stroop task with infant crying and white noise as the stimuli. They were instructed to answer the color out loud as quickly and accurately as possible, while ignoring the sound. Four types of audio stimuli were used in this task (the cry of the mother's own infant, the cry of an unfamiliar infant, white noise matched to the cry of the mother's own infant, and white noise matched to the cry of an unfamiliar infant), one of which was presented randomly before each trial. Response time and the correct response rate for each condition were the dependent variables. For response time, the main effect of familiarity was significant, with longer response times when the participant's infant's cry was presented. In addition, response times were lower at Time 2 than at Time 1 in some conditions in which crying was presented. The results suggest that mothers may be less disturbed by infant crying as they gain more experience. Elucidating the characteristics of postpartum mothers' changes in cognitive performance related to infants' cries would be useful in fundamental and applied research to understand the process of parents' adaptation to parenting.

The State Of Nurse Education: A Critical, yet Missing, Component

For several decades now it has been clear in the literature that nurses experience some of the highest levels of job-related stress compared to other health professions [1]. This is also supported by the high rates of burnout also found within the profession [2,3]. More recently, researchers have taken on an exploration of the stress-levels of nursing students to explore the onset of these highlevels of stress to discern where this population starts to differ.

Neural circuitry for maternal oxytocin release induced by infant cries.

Oxytocin is a neuropeptide that is important for maternal physiology and childcare, including parturition and milk ejection during nursing1-6. Suckling triggers the release of oxytocin, but other sensory cues-specifically, infant cries-can increase the levels of oxytocin in new human mothers7, which indicates that cries can activate hypothalamic oxytocin neurons. Here we describe a neural circuit that routes auditory information about infant vocalizations to mouse oxytocin neurons. We performed in vivo electrophysiological recordings and photometry from identified oxytocin neurons in awake maternal mice that were presented with pup calls. We found that oxytocin neurons responded to pup vocalizations, but not to pure tones, through input from the posterior intralaminar thalamus, and that repetitive thalamic stimulation induced lasting disinhibition of oxytocin neurons. This circuit gates central oxytocin release and maternal behaviour in response to calls, providing a mechanism for the integration of sensory cues from the offspring in maternal endocrine networks to ensure modulation of brain state for efficient parenting.

How can cry acoustics associate newborns' distress levels with neurophysiological and behavioral signals?

Even though infant crying is a common phenomenon in humans' early life, it is still a challenge for researchers to properly understand it as a reflection of complex neurophysiological functions. Our study aims to determine the association between neonatal cry acoustics with neurophysiological signals and behavioral features according to different cry distress levels of newborns. Multimodal data from 25 healthy term newborns were collected simultaneously recording infant cry vocalizations, electroencephalography (EEG), near-infrared spectroscopy (NIRS) and videos of facial expressions and body movements. Statistical analysis was conducted on this dataset to identify correlations among variables during three different infant conditions (i.e., resting, cry, and distress). A Deep Learning (DL) algorithm was used to objectively and automatically evaluate the level of cry distress in infants. We found correlations between most of the features extracted from the signals depending on the infant's arousal state, among them: fundamental frequency (F0), brain activity (delta, theta, and alpha frequency bands), cerebral and body oxygenation, heart rate, facial tension, and body rigidity. Additionally, these associations reinforce that what is occurring at an acoustic level can be characterized by behavioral and neurophysiological patterns. Finally, the DL audio model developed was able to classify the different levels of distress achieving 93% accuracy. Our findings strengthen the potential of crying as a biomarker evidencing the physical, emotional and health status of the infant becoming a crucial tool for caregivers and clinicians.

Neural reactivity to infant emotion cues during pregnancy: Associations with peripartum anxiety and depressive symptoms

BackgroundPregnancy is marked by physiological and psychosocial changes for women, and event-related potentials (ERP) are comfortable and safe for examining brain function across pregnancy. The late positive potential (LPP) ERP, a measure of allocated attention to emotional stimuli, may provide insight into associations between internalizing symptoms and neural processing of infant emotion cues, which may be particularly salient in this life stage. MethodsWe developed a task to examine neural and behavioral responses to infant faces in pregnant women (N = 120, Mage=31.09, SD=4.81), the impact of auditory infant cries on the LPP to faces, and associations between the LPP and anxiety and depressive symptoms. Participants matched distressed, happy, and neutral infant faces and shapes as a comparison condition with interspersed auditory conditions (infant cry sounds vs. white noise) while electroencephalogram data were collected. Participants also completed self-report measures of anxiety and depressive symptoms. ResultsReaction time (RT) was faster for the infant cry vs. white noise condition and when matching shapes vs. infant faces. Depressive symptoms were associated with slower RTs to neutral infant faces. The LPP was enhanced overall to faces vs. shapes, but there was no main effect of auditory condition. Anxiety symptoms were associated with an enhanced LPP to infant distressed faces in the infant cry condition. ConclusionsResults support these methods for measuring neural and behavioral responses to infant emotional cues in pregnancy and provide evidence that combinations of auditory and visual stimuli may be particularly useful for capturing emotional processes relevant to anxiety.

Cannabis use during pregnancy and hemodynamic responses to infant cues in pregnancy: an exploratory study.

Cannabis is one of the most commonly used substances during pregnancy and has the potential to negatively impact parent-infant relationships. The prefrontal cortex (PFC) response to infant cues during pregnancy has been associated with subsequent positive parenting behaviors. However, PFC activation is altered in individuals who use cannabis. As the potency of cannabis has changed over the years, little is known about the specific role of cannabis use on gestational parent brain responses to infant cues. Using functional Near-Infrared Spectroscopy (fNIRS) in the second trimester of pregnancy, we measured hemodynamic responses to an infant cry task and an infant faces task among individuals who were using cannabis (N = 14) and compared them with those who were not using cannabis (N = 45). For the infant cry task, pregnant individuals listened to cry sounds and matched white noise. For the infant faces task, they viewed happy, sad, and neutral faces. There was no significant difference between the two groups after adjusting for multiple comparisons. Without adjusting for multiple comparisons, we found preliminary evidence for the differences in the dorsomedial PFC associated with heightened response to infant cry among individuals who use cannabis. The groups were also different in the dorsolateral PFC associated with decreased response to infant sad faces among individuals who use cannabis. Our preliminary data suggests that cannabis use during pregnancy was associated with brain activation in the regions involved in the emotional regulation and information processes. However, the results did not survive after adjustment for multiple comparisons, thus future research with larger sample sizes is needed to confirm potential differences in brain function among cannabis-using pregnant individuals.

Human infant cries communicate distress and elicit sex stereotypes: Cross cultural evidence

The degree to which culture and context contribute to variability in human behaviour is a critical scientific question. While most research in the human behavioural sciences is based on WEIRD samples, the last decade has seen a rise in research on traditionally under-represented populations, including small-scall societies, to demonstrate reproducibility of results. Considering this framework as a major objective, here we explore cross-cultural ubiquity in the production and perception of human baby cries, focusing on remote rural communities in the Democratic Republic of Congo, compared to analogous data from French and British samples. Through acoustic analysis of Congolese baby cries recorded in natural discomfort (bath) and pain (vaccine) contexts, combined with psychoacoustic experiments on Congolese adult listeners, we show that distress is reliably encoded in the acoustic cry signal, namely in nonlinear acoustic phenomena. Despite the absence of sexual dimorphism in cries, low-pitched cries are more often perceived as produced by boys than girls, and cries experimentally attributed to boys are perceived as expressing more distress than the same cries experimentally attributed to girls. Having obtained similar results in European samples, this study provides compelling evidence that these voice-based stereotypes are stable and robust, observed across extremely distinct human populations.

IMPLEMENTATION OF FAST FOURIER TRANSFORM (FFT) FOR INFANT CRYING DETECTION

Babies cry based on the discomfort felt by the baby which is a reflex such as when a hungry baby will suck his hand and then he will start crying, hunger can be interpreted from the baby's crying. At each of the baby's cries, when each crying pattern was responded to with the solution applied to the previous baby, each baby would stop crying. For this reason, to carry out this solution, a research was carried out to identify the pattern recognition of the sound of a baby's cry using the fast fourier transform (FFT) method with several different frequency ranges. The voice recording process is stored in digital form in the form of frequency-based sound spectrum waves, where signals that were previously in the time domain will be changed in the frequency domain. The sounds that will be distinguished in this study include the sounds of crying babies, adults, and colliding objects. This can be obtained through several stages, namely sound sample recording, sampling, signal cutting, frame blocking, final normalization, hamming window, and finally the FFT calculation process. From these series of stages, the results of the frequency range of baby crying are 101-1863 Hz, for adults the frequency range is 101-1376 Hz and for the sound of colliding objects 101-2233 Hz.

Barriers to Exclusive Breastfeeding for Mothers in Tswelopele Municipality, Free State Province, South Africa: A Qualitative Study.

Despite the numerous advantages of exclusive breastfeeding (EBF), the practice remains infrequently adopted in certain countries and is also associated with context-specific obstacles. Consequently, this study explores the experiences and opinions of mothers about the barriers and support systems of exclusive breastfeeding (EBF), in a bid to promote this practice in the Tswelopele Municipality of the Free State Province of South Africa. In-depth individual, semi-structured interviews were conducted with 16 mothers, using an audio recorder after receiving their permission to record the interviews. The analysis of the collected data revealed that opinions clustered around four topics: mother-related barriers to EBF, baby-related barriers to EBF, support systems to enhance EBF, and complications caused by barriers to EBF. The findings from these themes and sub-themes imply that the maternal factor is strongly influenced by other factors regarding the success or failure of this practice. These include extreme breast discomfort, maternal illness, the fear that the mother's milk supply is insufficient, a lack of understanding about EBF, and the influence of different cultural factors. When mothers encounter difficulties with breastfeeding, these challenges may impede their ability to practice EBF. In addition, while some participants were eager to breastfeed their babies and continued EBF for a period of six months, their infant's health and behavioral issues prevented them from doing so. Some of these problems included infant sickness and crying. From the prenatal to the postnatal period, mothers and their families should have access to breastfeeding education and counseling, along with sufficient time to make informed infant nutrition decisions. During counseling sessions, conversations with these stakeholders should focus on fostering a realistic understanding regarding what to expect when breastfeeding for the very first time, debunking breastfeeding-related misconceptions, and addressing inaccurate information and concerns. In addition, health professionals must be empathic and respectful of the mother's traditions and cultures and must also educate mothers and their families on the importance of EBF. Our list of themes and sub-themes could be utilized to enlighten exclusive breastfeeding challenges and potential mitigation efforts, not only in Tswelopele Municipality, South Africa but also in a number of other geographical contexts.

Crocodile perception of distress in hominid baby cries.

It is generally argued that distress vocalizations, a common modality for alerting conspecifics across a wide range of terrestrial vertebrates, share acoustic features that allow heterospecific communication. Yet studies suggest that the acoustic traits used to decode distress may vary between species, leading to decoding errors. Here we found through playback experiments that Nile crocodiles are attracted to infant hominid cries (bonobo, chimpanzee and human), and that the intensity of crocodile response depends critically on a set of specific acoustic features (mainly deterministic chaos, harmonicity and spectral prominences). Our results suggest that crocodiles are sensitive to the degree of distress encoded in the vocalizations of phylogenetically very distant vertebrates. A comparison of these results with those obtained with human subjects confronted with the same stimuli further indicates that crocodiles and humans use different acoustic criteria to assess the distress encoded in infant cries. Interestingly, the acoustic features driving crocodile reaction are likely to be more reliable markers of distress than those used by humans. These results highlight that the acoustic features encoding information in vertebrate sound signals are not necessarily identical across species.

Enhancing early parenting in the community: Preliminary results from a learning collaborative approach to scale up Attachment and Biobehavioral Catch-up.

Attachment and Biobehavioral Catch-up (ABC) is a promising home-visiting intervention promoting sensitive caregiving and secure parent-child attachment in families with young children. The goal of this study was to examine a learning collaborative approach to disseminating ABC in a community setting. Training outcomes (e.g., trainee completion, satisfaction, effectiveness of training methods) and intervention outcomes (e.g., parent behavior, parent beliefs, child socioemotional development) were examined. Eighteen practitioners participated in the ABC learning collaborative; 13 completed training. Quantitative and qualitative measures indicated that trainees were satisfied with their experience and valued the unique collaboration opportunities offered by the learning collaborative. In addition, trainees served 67 families in the community, 37 of whom completed all sessions of ABC. The study was conducted in the United States. Racial demographics of the children in the sample included: 56.7% White, 22.4% Black/African-American, 17.9% Bi- or Multi-racial, and 3.0% unknown. Regarding ethnicity, 80.6% were Non-Hispanic/Latino, 10.4% were Hispanic/Latino, and 9.0% were unknown. Caregivers who completed ABC showed more sensitive parenting behavior and reported positive changes in their perceived self-efficacy and their beliefs around infant crying. Children who received ABC showed increased socioemotional functioning. Results demonstrate successful dissemination of ABC in the community using a learning collaborative approach.