Have you ever noticed how mothers just seem to “know” what their babies need from
single cry?
…. Or do they?
...
HI guys, Crystal here for DNews.
I dont know about you, but I am terrified of babies.
They scream, they cry, they don’t use their words and I want to help, but I can never
quite seem to figure out what they want.
But, mothers, mothers just seem to “know”.
Even if it’s not their kid that’s doing the crying.
Whats up with that?
Its almost as if mothers have a clairvoyant ability to perceive subtleties in the vocalizations
of their offspring and pick up some imperceptible communication about whether a child is hungry,
lonely, or in pain when all of us non-parents just hear screaming.
Dont believe me?
just ask one, they’ll tell you.
But is this really true?
Well, yes and no.
Science has shown that the “primal pull” of a baby in distress is enough to reach across
species.
Mule deer mothers (yes, deer.
We’re talking bambi) deer mothers that live in the wilds of the Canadian prairie quickly
move toward recordings of infant deer distress sounds, but they also respond to the distress
calls of animals they’ve never encountered before like infant fur seals, dogs, cats and
even humans!
Now all these species have distress calls at roughly the same pitch, so scientists concluded
that there must be some evolutionary significance to the similarity of infant distress calls
and to the maternal response to them.
By the way, my favorite part of that experiment was they showed that even the ultrasonic calls
of infant bats attracted the deer mothers if scientists used software to lower their
pitch to match deer calls.
So there is definitely evidence to support the maternal instinct to relieve a baby in
distress.
But c’mon, do you really know that that is your baby’s “hungry cry”? or are
you inferring that from time of day and the fact you’ve tried everything else?
Well, while I’ve had many a parent assure me that there is in fact some deep ability
to non-verbally communicate with their infant child, science says …. eh, not really.
A recent paper out of the Czech Republic tested this assertion by playing recordings of various
human infant cries recorded from babies between 5 and 10 months of age.
The researchers used both distress cries like those associated with hunger, pain, and isolation,
and non-distressed vocalizations from infants that had just been reunited with a parent,
just been fed, or were engaged in play.
These sounds were played back for a sample of 333 subjects composed of female and male
adult humans, some but not all of whom were parents themselves and the subjects were asked
to classify the communications.
Unsurprisingly, the data show that adult humans are universally able to differentiate a child’s
distress cry from any other vocalization, and are also really accurate at identifying
the sounds of play, but that’s where our abilities start to diverge.
Being a parent slightly improved a subject’s ability to differentiate the play situation
and the hunger situation from any other, and younger subjects were simply better at classifying
the sounds in general.
But my favorite statement from the discussion section of this paper was “Our results thus
support the hypothesis that men and women are equally well predisposed to perceive and
decode information from baby vocalisations”
Surprising?
Sorry guys you’re not off the hook!
Men are just as capable of anticipating the source of an infant’s cry as woman (and
don’t let your spouse tell you any differently, because Science!)
So, once again science swoops in and casts doubt on socially held beliefs about human
nature.
No, we can’t tell what our babies want just by hearing them cry, and women don’t “just
know these things”.
So parents, go out there and do your best!
Its no better or worse than anyone else could do.
What do you think?
Subscribe to DNews and let us know in the comments down below.
Also, I know some of you are thinking: I have the same reaction to vocalizations from my
pet, do I love my dog as much as my baby?
Well good news!
Science has an answer!