Audio recording of infant crying: Comparison with maternal cry logs

Abstract

This study investigated the accuracy of mothers’ reports of their babies’ crying. The crying of babies, 5-16 weeks old, was recorded by means of a wire-less, miniature microphone contained within a terry cloth belt worn by the baby. Crying was transmitted to a voice-activated recorder with a range of 500 feet. Thirteen 24-hour recordings were obtained from seven infants while, at the same time, the mothers kept a Cry Log of their baby’s crying. The number of minutes of crying and the number of bouts of crying obtained from the two procedures were highly correlated, although the amount of crying reported by the mothers was less than that obtained from the recorder. The mothers reported fewer bouts of crying. The results suggest that maternal cry reports are valuable for obtaining relative amounts of crying of infants within a group, as well as information on mothers’ perceptions of their infants’ crying, whereas audio recordings offer a more precise method for obtaining the amount and temporal patterning of infant crying.