Determining normal infants´ level-of-distress from cry sounds

In this research a set of ten “cry phonemes” is introduced to effectively characterize cry signals from normal infants. The cry phonemes of recorded cries are correlated with subjective parental assessments of the infants´ distress levels. From these correlations a single parameter, the H-value, is found as a reliable indicator to the infants´ level-of-distress. The H-value can be measured and manipulated efficiently by using computerized signal analysis. This makes it suitable for computer-based automatic infant cry analysis