Study finds parents with young children decode babies’ cries better than adults with no childcare skills
If the wails of your newborn baby leave you baffled as to what is wrong, just give it time. Deciphering a baby’s cries is all down to experience, new research suggests.
“We found that adults can recognise signals of pain as opposed to mild discomfort in babies’ cries, but that ability requires prior experience,” said the lead author of the study, Siloé Corvin., shows that parents with young children are much better at decoding babies’ cries than adults with little or no childcare experience.
Over 200 participants with different levels of childcare experience were given eight recordings of a baby crying which they listened to over two days. They then had to distinguish between the cries of pain induced by a vaccination and cries of discomfort recorded at bath time. The study is part of a broader research programme studying how information is encoded and communicated in babies’ cries.“Babies have to express their pain or discomfort through cries and vocalisations,” said Corvin. “There are other ways to tell if a baby is in pain, for example by its facial expressions or posture, but cries can give us additional information about how the baby is feeling.”
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