Acoustic and Physiological Characteristics of Pre-term and Full-term Infants' Cries

미숙아와 만삭아 울음의 음향 및 생리학적 특성

The purpose of this study is to first discriminate and assess those infants who appear healthy in appearance but who could face possible risk factors in the future and, secondly, to identify those infants who may have difficulties in their developmental stages. The subjects of this study consisted of 35 full-term infants (39-40 weeks) and 33 pre-term infants (34-35 weeks). The infants' voices were recorded for three minutes, for which EDIROL by Roland and a stand-type microphone made by SONY were used. This was done to discern the value of the Breath unit (B-unit) and the fundamental frequencies ($F_0$). It was found that there were significant differences in terms of F0 since the pre-term infants had higher F0 than the full-term infants, showing a result of 436.4 Hz for the full-term infants and 460 Hz for the pre-term infants (p<.05) There was an average rate of 4.01 for the full-term infants and 4.02 (SD=1.69) for the pre-term infants in shimmer. For NHR, it was observed .44 for the full-term infants and .50 for the pre-term infants, thus revealing no significant differences in these observations. This study shows that the crying of newborn babies is related to their physical conditions and it is a sensatory response to these conditions. Furthermore, this study could be helpful for the early detection and measurement of newborn babies who look clinically healthy but could be at risk through acoustic and physiological analyses.