Taeko TSUKAMOTO and Yoh'ichi TOHKURA
The effects of tempo and pitch
on the judgment of infant cries
Abstract:A perceptual experiment was performed to examine the effects
of pitch and the interactions of pitch and tempo in three
categories of cries: hunger, anger, and call. In each category, the
duration and fundamental frequency (F0) of the cry stimuli were
systematically varied by signal processing so as to keep their
formant structure unchanged. After the training in classifying
the cries, the subjects (60 women and 29 men) who had had no
experience of infant care were instructed to identify the cry
stimuli by making a forced choice among the three categories.
The data for 38 women and 17 men who successfully learned
the cry classification were analyzed. Results showed that the
correct response rates shifted significantly by varying the tempo
but rather less when F0 was varied across all categories. This
indicates that tempo is a predominant perceptual cue for the
judgment of cries.