Are Cry Studies Replicable? An Analysis of Participants, Procedures, and Methods Adopted and Reported in Studies of Infant Cries

Giulio Gabrieli, Giulia Scapin, Marc H. Bornstein, Gianluca Esposito

Research output: Contribution to journalReview articlepeer-review

Abstract

Infant cry is evolutionarily, psychologically, and clinically significant. Over the last half century, several researchers and clinicians have investigated acoustical properties of infant cry for medical purposes. However, this literature suffers a lack of standardization in conducting and reporting cry-based studies. In this work, methodologies and procedures employed to analyze infant cry are reviewed and best practices for reporting studies are provided. First, available literatures on vocal and audio acoustic analysis are examined to identify critical aspects of participant information, data collection, methods, and data analysis. Then, 180 peer-reviewed research articles have been assessed to certify the presence of critical information. Results show a general lack of critical description. Researchers in the field of infant cry need to develop a consensual standard set of criteria to report experimental studies to ensure the validity of their methods and results.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)866-883
Number of pages18
JournalAcoustics
Volume1
Issue number4
DOIs
StatePublished - Dec 2019
Externally publishedYes

Bibliographical note

Publisher Copyright:
© 2019 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland.

Keywords

  • acoustic analysis
  • cry analysis
  • infant cry

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • Acoustics and Ultrasonics

Fingerprint

Dive into the research topics of 'Are Cry Studies Replicable? An Analysis of Participants, Procedures, and Methods Adopted and Reported in Studies of Infant Cries'. Together they form a unique fingerprint.

Cite this