Being able to tell if a baby is in pain is vital information for new parents and carers. But rather than being an innate skill that adults can rely on, understanding the difference between cries of pain and mild discomfort comes with experience. “We found that adults can recognize signals of pain as opposed to mild discomfort in crying babies, but this ability requires prior experience,” said the study’s lead author, Siloé Corvin. The study, published in the journal Current Biology, shows that parents of young children are much better at decoding babies’ cries than adults with little or no childcare experience. While this may not be surprising, the researchers also found that today’s parents could distinguish between cries of pain and distress from babies they had never heard before. Countless people were unable to do so, the researchers said. More than 200 participants with varying levels of childcare experience were given eight audio recordings of a baby crying which they listened to over two days. They then had to distinguish between cries of pain caused by a vaccination and cries of discomfort recorded at bath time. How well they did depended largely on previous and current exposure to the babies. While inexperienced adults did no better than chance, parents and child care professionals who frequently interacted with babies got it right 70% of the time. The study is part of a larger research program looking at how information is encoded and transmitted in babies’ cries. Subscribe to First Edition, our free daily newsletter – every morning at 7am. BST “Babies need to express their pain or discomfort through crying and vocalizations,” Corvin said. “There are other ways to tell if a baby is in pain, for example from facial expressions or body posture, but crying can give us additional information about how the baby is feeling.” The ability to decipher babies’ cries is likely to develop from the neurobiological changes that come with parenthood and infant care, the authors say. “The ability to distinguish between pain and discomfort comes quickly. it starts within the first hours of a baby’s life,” Corvin said. “By the time the baby is two or three months old, most parents know what different cries mean.” But you don’t have to be a parent to learn how to decode babies’ cries, Corvin said, adding, “Any exposure to babies — pediatric care, babysitting, even recording — can help tune your ear to different acoustics.” the patterns of their cries’.
