Taeko TSUKAMOTO, Yoh'ichi TOHKURA
The effect of tempo on infant cry
categorization
Abstract:A perceptual experiment was performed to examine the effect of tempo on
the categorization of infant cry stimuli using three cry labels: hunger, anger,
and call cries (i.e., calling for infant-mother interaction). In this experiment,
cry stimuli with a variety of tempo were generated from original cry stimuli
by changing the duration of cry stimuli using linear time-scale conversion.
Subjects were instructed to make a forced choice among the three categories
in labeling the cry stimuli. The results showed that the correct response rates
were reduced significantly when the original cry tempo was changed. It was
also found that anger cry stimuli, when time-scale expanded, tended to be
perceived as hunger cries. On the whole, it was shown that fast tempo (i.e.,
time-compression of the original stimuli) was a perceptual cue for the anger
cry and slow tempo (i.e., time-expansion of the original stimuli), on the other
hand, was a perceptual cue for the call cry. These results indicate that the cry
tempo is one reliable cue for cry category identification.