A classification model for infant cries with hearing impairment and unilateral cleft lip and palate

The aim of the study was to examine the acoustic features of infant cries in order to find differences between infants with normal development, hearing impairment (HI) and unilateral cleft lip and palate (UCLP). The study focused on two issues: (1) are differences in acoustic cry parameters specific of a certain pathological development, and (2) do these differences allow for a reliable classification of infant cries?

In total, 128 spontaneous cries of infants up to 12 months of age were recorded. The mean values of acoustic cry parameters were statistically analyzed by one-way analysis of variance and Sheffé post hoc tests. A C5.0 decision tree was trained to classify infant cries by their acoustic parameters.

Significant differences in cry duration, fundamental frequency, formants 2 and 4, intensity, jitter, shimmer and harmonics-to-noise ratio were found between the groups. The C5.0 decision tree was able to predict an infant's membership to the healthy, UCLP or HI groups with a probability of 89.2%.

We conclude that C5.0 decision trees are suited to reliably classify healthy infants as well as infants with HI and UCLP by acoustic parameters.