Features of infant sounds: the first eight weeks of life

Abstract

Vocalizations of two female infants, recorded between one and eight weeks of age, were studied. The vocalizations were classified as cry, discomfort and vegetative sounds. Five examples of each sound type were selected randomly from the output of both infants and at each of three age levels (90 vocalizations in all). No changes in features were noted as a result of increasing age. The two infants showed individual feature patterns for all sound types; however, for both infants, certain features were found to be highly typical of cry and discomfort sounds, and certain others of vegetative sounds. The implications for later speech development are discussed.