Baby crying stands out among the initial behaviors due to its central role in the child's survival, health and development. The sound of crying is composed of a myriad of temporal and acoustic characteristics that work like a biological siren, a signal that alerts and motivates the caregiver to meet the baby's needs. The perceived meaning and the response to this biological siren vary depending on the specific combination of acoustic properties that make up crying. For example, crying with a faster repetition rate, shorter expirations and pauses, and a higher pitch frequency (basic frequency) can induce more urgent caregiver responses to the baby's request than other cries with other acoustic characteristics. For this reason, the sound of the baby's cry plays an important role in the development of babies at risk of unsatisfactory psychosocial results due to conditions existing in the prenatal period and other conditions adverse to the neurobehavioral organization.
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