Noise phenomena in distress cries of term and very preterm infants at term-equivalent age

Abstract

Background and aim

To examine whether the noise components in distress cries of term infants differed from very preterm infants whose cries were collected at a comparable “corrected” gestational age.

Methods

Distress cries were collected from 20 term and 20 preterm infants. The cries were acoustically examined for the occurrence of aperiodic phonatory behavior within and across moments of crying.

Results

The findings indicated no significant differences between term and preterm infants at term age in the occurrence of noise.

Conclusions

Distress cries of both term and term-equivalent preterm infants appear to contain high instances of phonatory noise. The high arousal associated with distress crying and associated increase in subglottal pressure appeared to influence both term and term-equivalent preterm infants similarly.

Keywords:

• Acoustic analysis
• cry
• distress
• infants
• noise
• preterm

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

The authors report there is no funding associated with the work featured in this article.