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Related Experiment Video

Updated: Jun 17, 2026

Infant Auditory Processing and Event-related Brain Oscillations

Infant Auditory Processing and Event-related Brain Oscillations

Published on: July 1, 2015

Communicative development: neonate crying reflects patterns of native-language speech.

¹Centre for Music and Science, Faculty of Music, West Road, University of Cambridge, Cambridge CB3 9DP, UK. ic108@hermes.cam.ac.uk

Current Biology : CB

|January 13, 2010

Summary

This summary is machine-generated.

Newborn infant crying is sophisticated, mirroring prosodic features of their native languages. This suggests early language-specific vocalizations in babies.

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Area of Science:

Linguistics
Developmental Psychology
Bioacoustics

Background:

Infant crying is a primary communication method.
Previous research has explored acoustic properties of cries but not language-specific prosody.

Purpose of the Study:

To investigate whether newborn infant cries exhibit prosodic features characteristic of their native language.

Main Methods:

Analysis of crying vocalizations from newborns.
Comparison of prosodic patterns (intonation, rhythm) with linguistic features of parental languages.

Main Results:

Infant cries demonstrate significant prosodic similarities to their native language.
Specific acoustic patterns in cries align with the phonological structures of the ambient language.

Conclusions:

Newborns' crying behaviors are not random but incorporate language-specific prosodic elements.
This indicates an early, pre-verbal sensitivity to the phonetics of their native tongue.