Copyright 1981 The New York Times Company
The New York Times
November 3, 1981, Tuesday, Late City Final Edition
SECTION: Section C; Page 1, Column 2; Science Desk
LENGTH: 1562 words
HEADLINE: BABY'S CRY, IT TURNS OUT, CAN SPEAK VOLUMES
BYLINE: By DAVA
SOBEL
BODY:
EACH generation of new parents painfully confronts the old dilemma that the
crying baby presents. Should they pick up the infant, and thus risk
''spoiling'' the child, or should they sometimes leave him alone and ignore his
cries?
In trying to answer that question, scientists are learning that infant crying
is not simply a distress signal but a powerful communicator that helps
determine whether any baby will become an abused or a cherished child.
By crying and eliciting - or not eliciting - his parents' response, the infant
begins to shape a concept of the environment and to develop patterns of either
competence or helplessness that may persist lifelong, some researchers believe.
Studies show that infants as young as 8 weeks of age appreciate their ability
to make things happen through crying. Crying may also help them cope with the
limitations of their immature nervous systems.
Medically, the pitch and rhythm of a baby's cry hold promise as diagnostic
indicators of certain neurological disorders that are undetectable by any known
visual examination or laboratory test.
Crying behavior, including the infant's ability to console himself, is now
considered so important that it is routinely monitored by pediatricians using
the newest infant assessment procedures.
''Crying is a communicative act,'' said Michael Lewis, professor of pediatrics
at Rutgers Medical School and senior scientist at the Educational Testing
Service in Princeton, N.J., where he conducted his research. ''Ideally, crying
should teach the child optimism about the environment, which he learns when his
cries are answered. An infant as young as 8 weeks is capable of understanding
this, and of appreciating the fact that he can cause things to happen.''
Experiments with infants show that they pay attention to things that occur when
they act, Dr. Lewis explained,
by becoming more curious, smiling more and staying awake for longer periods of
time. But if the environment is unpredictable, if cries are not answered, the
infant feels confused and powerless. There is no causality to teach him a sense
of his own competence.
An infant's cry is a fundamentally disturbing noise, probably by evolutionary
design, according to Ann M. Frodi of the University of Rochester, who has
conducted laboratory experiments to test the effect of the sound of crying.
She has found that not just new parents, but childless adults of both sexes,
adolescents and children as young as 8 years have identical physiological
responses to infant crying. These include increases in heart rate, blood
pressure and the skin's electrical conductance. Asked to describe their
feelings, the subjects all mentioned irritation and anxiety provoked by the
sound.
''The basic reaction is to run to a crying
baby to relieve his distress,'' Dr. Frodi said in an interview. In one of a
series of studies, Dr. Frodi compared the effect on adults of a premature
baby's cry and that of a full-term infant. ''A premie's cry is a whole octave
higher,'' she explained. ''It also has different rhythm, pauses and
inhalation-exhalation patterns, and it has a much more aversive effect on the
listener.''
Although the cry appropriately signals greater urgency, Dr. Frodi said, it may
threaten the formation of a good parent-child relationship.
''If there is too much crying or the sound is too grating, you may opt to
relieve your own distress by trying to get away from the cry or by becoming
violent,'' she said.
Unusual acoustic properties of crying that may indicate infant illness or cause
problems for parents are the
special research interest of Barry M. Lester, director of developmental
research at Children's Hospital Medical Center in Boston.
Some Cries Are Irritating
''Mothers with a history of child abuse frequently say they couldn't stand the
high-pitched, irritating cry of the baby,'' Dr. Lester said. Unfortunately, he
noted, many situations, from slight malnutrition in the fetus to toxemia in the
mother can give the baby a high-pitched cry of 700 to 800 cycles per second, as
against 300 to 400 cycles per second for a normal cry.
''In these cases you've got to support the mother,'' Dr. Lester said. ''Tell
her that it's not her imagination the kid sounds lousy. The crying really is a
terrible noise, and the baby requires some ginger handling. With this kind of
help she can pass her energy onto the child,
instead of turning it into depression or anger over the fact that he's not
perfect.''
Dr. Lester and his colleague, Sandy Zeskind, have been trying to associate
particular features of infants' cries with specific physical disorders.
Although efforts in this direction began in Scandinavia in the 1950's, the
equipment for recording and analyzing voice prints has only recently made the
work seem promising.
Perhaps the most striking example of the correlation between cry and condition
is the syndrome known as ''cri du chat,'' or cry of the cat, a genetic anomaly
that produces brain abnormality, unusual facial features and, Dr. Lester said,
''a very high-pitched, squealy cry that sends chills down the spine.'' Cri du
chat, however, is easy to diagnose without hearing the infant cry.
Dr. Lester and Dr. Zeskind report that by coincidence they had recorded some
cries of
babies who later died of sudden infant death syndrome, and they compared these
to the crying of babies who thrived.
''Some of the features are different,'' Dr. Lester said, ''but we must get more
precise ways of looking at them before we can identify infants at risk.''
Crying a Diagnostic Aid
In a full-term infant of normal weight at birth, crying is also a focus for
diagnostic work. The Neonatal Behavioral Assessment Scale, devised in 1973 by
Dr. T. Berry Brazelton of Children's Hospital in Boston and now used at more
than 350 health facilities around the world, requires the doctor to elicit the
baby's cry and to note what it takes to console him.
''The scale is an attempt to see in 20 minutes all the behaviors the baby might
have in a 24-hour period,'' Dr. Brazelton said in an interview. Another goal is to explain
the findings to the parents in the hope of fostering good understanding between
them and their child.
Dr. Brazelton also noted that perhaps as many as 80 percent of newborns younger
than 10 weeks may need a daily crying period of 15 minutes to an hour, usually
between 6 and 10 P.M., to discharge the stimulation of sights and sounds in the
environment.
''The only ways the infant can handle this sensory overload to its central
nervous system,'' he said, ''are by sleeping, getting overactive or crying.''
On the question of spoiling babies by responding to their every cry, Susan
Crockenberg, associate professor of human development at the University of
California at Davis, summarized the work of several researchers by saying,
''The more responsive a mother is to her baby, the less it
cries, the more securely attached it gets to be and the more readily it
develops trust.''
Dr. Crockenberg tested this idea another way by asking expectant mothers
whether or not they believed they would spoil the baby by picking him up each
time he cried. When she later observed them with their infants, she found that
the mothers who feared that they might spoil their children and acted
accordingly had babies who cried more than other babies.
Professionals and parents agree that babies seem to have a vocabulary of cries
for signaling different situations, such as hunger or pain. But Judy Dunn, in
her book ''Distress and Comfort'' (Harvard University Press), reported results
of a study showing that a baby left to cry for more than a few minutes settles
into a rhythmic crying pattern that can no longer be interpreted by adults.
Physical Harm Is
Possible
Prolonged crying may actually be harmful, according to a report presented at a
1976 workshop at the University of Illinois, which found a marked decrease in
oxygen pressure in the arteries of babies with respiratory distress after
crying.
''To claim that crying is good for the baby's lungs is like saying that
bleeding must be good for the veins,'' said Dr. Lee Salk, professor of
psychiatry and pediatrics at New York Hospital-Cornell Medical Center.
''Children whose cries are answered learn to vocalize well, and not to whine or
whimper,'' Dr. Salk said, ''because they've already found out that verbal
behavior is rewarded.''
''A baby repeatedly left to cry alone,'' he continued, ''ultimately learns to
give up and tune out the world. This is learned helplessness, and possibly the
beginning of adult depression.''
However, Dr. Lewis pointed
out that development is too complex to allow a direct connection between
unattended crying and adult psychopathology.
''Research shows that cultures more responsive to babies have more precocious
infants,'' he said, ''but this says nothing about later life.''
GRAPHIC: Illustrations: photo of a crying baby
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH
