Abstract
Introduction: Cry melody serves as a platform for the eventual development of expressive language. Complex melodic structures exist in the naturally occurring discomfort cries of healthy term infants as young as 2 months of age. To date, no study has analyzed the influence of distress on complexity of cry melody. The purpose of this study was to determine whether the distress cries produced across a group of infants contained a comparable amount of the complexity as previously reported for discomfort cries at that age. Methods: A group of 11 healthy 2-month-old infants served as participants for the study. Distress cries were collected from each infant and were analyzed acoustically. The complex melodies occurring within the overall crying episode of each infant were determined. Results: Findings indicated a low occurrence of complex melody in distress cries at the age of 2 months compared to past reports for same-aged infants producing non-distress spontaneous cries. Cries judged to be reflective of low distress were generally found to have a more complex melody. Conclusion: Collectively, the present study supports the hypothesis that the complexity of cry melody is reduced in distress-elicited crying.
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