Duration and Voice Quality of Early Infant Vocalizations

Gregory, Adele; Tabain, Marija; Robb, Michael P.

doi:10.1044/2018_jslhr-s-17-0316

Cited by 5 publications

(1 citation statement)

References 34 publications

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“…3). This result demonstrated that melodic intervals seem to be a regularly occurring phenomenon in spontaneous crying of healthy infants, most likely reflecting both, an increasing vocal control and vocal flexibility during the first 4 months of life [35,[53][54][55][56]. Moreover, our findings demonstrated also that interval complexity and, hence, intentional "melody play" increased in spontaneous crying with age (from 30% in week 1 to 57% in week 16).…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 61%

Musical Intervals in Infants’ Spontaneous Crying over the First 4 Months of Life

Armbrüster

Mende

Gelbrich

et al. 2020

Folia Phoniatr Logop

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Introduction: Perception and memorizing of melody and rhythm start about the third trimester of gestation. Infants have astonishing musical predispositions, and melody contour is most salient for them. Objective: To longitudinally analyse melody contour of spontaneous crying of healthy infants and to identify melodic intervals. The aim was 3-fold: (1) to answer the question whether spontaneous crying of healthy infants regularly exhibits melodic intervals across the observation period, (2) to investigate whether interval events become more complex with age and (3) to analyse interval size distribution. Methods: Weekly cry recordings of 12 healthy infants (6 females) over the first 4 months of life were analysed (6,130 cry utterances) using frequency spectrograms and pitch analyses (PRAAT). A preselection of utterances containing a well-identifiable, noise-free and undisturbed melodic contour was applied to identify and measure melodic intervals in the final subset of 3,114 utterances. Age-dependent frequency of occurrence of melodic intervals was statistically analysed using generalized estimating equations. Results: 85.3% of all preselected melody contours (n = 3,114) either contained single rising or falling melodic intervals or complex events as combinations of both. In total 6,814 melodic intervals were measured. A significant increase in interval occurrence was found characterized by a non-linear age effect (3 developmental phases). Complex events were found to significantly increase linearly with age. In both calculations, no sex effect was found. Interval size distribution showed a maximum of the minor second as the prevailing musical interval in infants’ crying over the first 4 months of life. Conclusion: Melodic intervals seem to be a regular phenomenon of spontaneous crying of healthy infants. They are suggested to be a further candidate for developing an early risk marker of vocal control in infants. Subsequent studies are needed to compare healthy infants and infants at risk for respiratory-laryngeal dysfunction to investigate the diagnostic value of the occurrence of melodic intervals and their age-depending complexification.

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Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 61%

Musical Intervals in Infants’ Spontaneous Crying over the First 4 Months of Life

Armbrüster

Mende

Gelbrich

et al. 2020

Folia Phoniatr Logop

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The maturational gradient of infant vocalizations: Developmental stages and functional modules

Kent

2022

Infant Behavior and Development

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Laryngeal Constriction Phenomena in Infant Vocalizations

Robb

Yavarzadeh

Schlüter

et al. 2020

J Speech Lang Hear Res

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Purpose Instances of laryngeal constriction have been noted as a feature of infant vocal development. The purpose of this study was to directly evaluate the developmental occurrence of laryngeal constriction phenomena in infant crying, cooing, and babbling vocalizations. Method The cry and noncry vocalizations of 20 healthy term-born infants between the ages of 1 and 7 months were examined for instances of laryngeal constriction. Approximately 20,000 vocalization samples were acoustically evaluated, applying a combined visual (frequency spectra and melody curves) and auditory analysis; the occurrence of instances of different constriction phenomena was analyzed. Results Laryngeal constrictions were found during the production of cry and noncry vocalizations. The developmental pattern of constrictions for both vocalizations was charac-terized by an increase in constrictions followed by a decrease. During the age period of 3–5 months, when cry and noncry vocalizations were co-occurring, laryngeal constrictions were observed in 14%–22% of both types of vocalizations. An equal percentage of constrictions was found for both vocalizations at 5 months of age. Conclusions The findings confirm that the production of laryngeal constriction is a regularly occurring phenomenon in healthy, normally developing infants' spontaneous crying, cooing, and marginal babbling. The occurrence of constriction in both cry and noncry vocalizations suggests that an infant is exploiting physiological constraints of the sound-generating system for articulatory development during vocal exploration. These results lend support to the notion that the laryngeal articulator is the principal articulator that infants 1st start to control as they test and practice their phonetic production skills from birth through the 1st several months of life.

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Duration and Voice Quality of Early Infant Vocalizations

Cited by 5 publications

References 34 publications

Musical Intervals in Infants’ Spontaneous Crying over the First 4 Months of Life

Musical Intervals in Infants’ Spontaneous Crying over the First 4 Months of Life

The maturational gradient of infant vocalizations: Developmental stages and functional modules

Laryngeal Constriction Phenomena in Infant Vocalizations

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