Skip to main content
Log in

Emotion Attribution in Nonverbal Vocal Communication Directed to Preterm Infants

  • Original Paper
  • Published:
Journal of Nonverbal Behavior Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

The first weeks of life for preterm babies are critical for bonding and attachment. Early vocal contact, as a family based intervention, engages mothers to speak and to sing to their preterm infants in the incubators. This study tested the emotional and smiling content of the mother’s speaking and singing voice in a context of early contact with her newborn preterm infant in the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU), and it examines which acoustic parameters are associated with emotion attributed to the mother’s voice. The main hypothesis is that the emotional content of maternal speech and song, when directed to their preterm infants placed in incubators, is modulated by the infants’ behaviors. Thirty-two blocks of vocal extracts in the presence and absence of preterm infants’ displays and in the 5 s preceding each display were presented to 31 adult naïve listeners who were asked to rate the degree of emotion and smile in the mother’s voice. The present results show that when infants open the eyes or smile, the maternal voice is perceived as more emotional and more smiling than it is in the absence of any facial display. This effect is particularly evident in the maternal speech. The maternal voice is rated as more smiling in the presence of the infant’s smile than when preterm infants opened the eyes. The main acoustical features of the infant-directed voice—mean pitch and perceived sound pressure level—are positively associated with smiling attribution while only the mean pitch is associated with emotional intensity. These findings extends prior evidences by showing that maternal ID speech and songs, even in at-risk conditions such as prematurity, are not only related to preterm infant behavior, but also bear emotional content. Early face-to-face interactions between mothers and preterm infants need to be encouraged in the NICU and investigated, especially neural correlates, to assess the impact of emotional infant-directed voices on preterm infants’ brain development.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Subscribe and save

Springer+ Basic
$34.99 /Month
  • Get 10 units per month
  • Download Article/Chapter or eBook
  • 1 Unit = 1 Article or 1 Chapter
  • Cancel anytime
Subscribe now

Buy Now

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Fig. 1
Fig. 2

Similar content being viewed by others

Notes

  1. We report the effect sizes according to Nakagawa and Schielzeth (2013), implemented in the “MuMIn” R package. Authors developed an approach on the basis of two indicators: a marginal and conditional R2 (“R2m” and “R2c,” respectively), allowing comparability with standard methods, while taking into account the variance explained by the random effects. R2m is the variance explained by the fixed factors, whereas R2c is the variance explained by the entire model (both fixed and random effects). We calculated them for each significant effect in our statistical models.

References

  • Akhtar, N., & Gernsbacher, M. A. (2008). On privileging the role of gaze in infant social cognition. Child Development Perspectives, 2, 59–65.

    Article  PubMed  PubMed Central  Google Scholar 

  • Aubergé, V., & Cathiard, M. (2003). Can we hear the prosody of smile? Speech Communication, 40, 87–97.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Banse, R., & Scherer, K. R. (1996). Acoustic profiles in vocal emotion expression. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 70, 614–636.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Berwick, R. C., Friederici, A. D., Chomsky, N., & Bolhuis, J. J. (2013). Evolution, brain, and the nature of language. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 17, 89–98.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Boersma, P., & Weenink, D. (2003). Praat-A system for doing phonetics by computer [Computer Software]. The Netherlands: Institute of Phonetic Sciences, University of Amsterdam.

    Google Scholar 

  • Cooper, R. P., & Aslin, R. N. (1990). Preference for infant-directed speech in the first month after birth. Child Development, 61, 1584–1595.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Corbeil, M., Trehub, S. E., & Peretz, I. (2013). Speech vs. singing: Infants choose happier sounds. Frontiers in Psychology, 4, 372.

    Article  PubMed  PubMed Central  Google Scholar 

  • Delavenne, A., Gratier, M., Devouche, E., & Apter, G. (2008). Phrasing and fragmented time in “pathological” mother-infant vocal interaction. Musicae Scientiae, 12(Suppl. 1), 47–70.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Eckerman, C. O., Hsu, H. C., Molitor, A., Leung, E. H., & Goldstein, R. F. (1999). Infant arousal in an en-face exchange with a new partner: Effects of prematurity and perinatal biological risk. Developmental Psychology, 35, 282–293.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Eckerman, C. O., Oehler, J. M., Medvin, M. B., & Hannan, T. E. (1994). Premature newborns as social partners before term age. Infant Behavior and Development, 17, 55–70.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Ekman, P., Davidson, R. J., & Friesen, W. (1990). The Duchenne smile: Emotional expression and brain physiology II. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 58, 342–353.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Emde, R. N., McCartney, R. D., & Harmon, R. J. (1971). Neonatal smiling in REM states, IV: Premature study. Child Development, 42, 1657–1661.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Feldman, R., & Eidelman, A. I. (2003). Skin-to-skin contact (Kangaroo Care) accelerates autonomic and neurobehavioural maturation in preterm infants. Developmental Medicine and Child Neurology, 45, 274–281.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Fernald, A., & Kuhl, P. (1987). Acoustic determinants of infant preference for motherese speech. Infant Behavior and Development, 10, 279–293.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Fernald, A., & Simon, T. (1984). Expanded intonation contours in mothers’ speech to newborns. Developmental Psychology, 20, 104–113.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Fernald, A., Taeschner, T., Dunn, J., Papousek, M., de Boysson-Bardies, B., & Fukui, I. (1989). A cross-language study of prosodic modifications in mothers’ and fathers’ speech to preverbal infants. Journal of Child Language, 16, 477–501.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Filippa, M., Devouche, E., Arioni, C., Imberty, M., & Gratier, M. (2013). Live maternal speech and singing have beneficial effects on hospitalized preterm infants. Acta Paediatrica, 102, 1017–1020.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Filippa, M., Gratier, M., Devouche, E., & Grandjean, D. (2018). Changes in infant-directed speech and song are related to preterm infant facial expression in the neonatal intensive care unit. Interaction Studies.

  • Jaffe, J., Beebe, B., Feldstein, S., Crown, C. L., Jasnow, M. D., Rochat, P., et al. (2001). Rhythms of dialogue in infancy: Coordinated timing in development. Monographs of the Society for Research in Child Development, 66, i-149.

    Google Scholar 

  • Kawakami, K., Takai-Kawakami, K., Kawakami, F., Tomonaga, M., Suzuki, M., & Shimizu, Y. (2008). Roots of smile: A preterm neonates’ study. Infant Behavior & Development, 31(3), 518–522. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.infbeh.2008.03.002.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Lester, B. M., Hoffman, J., & Brazelton, T. B. (1985). The rhythmic structure of mother-infant interaction in term and preterm infants. Child Development, 56, 15–27.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Merrill, J., Sammler, D., Bangert, M., Goldhahn, D., Lohmann, G., Turner, R., et al. (2012). Perception of words and pitch patterns in song and speech. Frontiers in Psychology, 3, 76.

    Article  PubMed  PubMed Central  Google Scholar 

  • Messinger, D., Dondi, M., Christina Nelson-Goens, G., Beghi, A., Fogel, A., & Simion, F. (2002). How sleeping neonates smile. Developmental Science, 5(1), 48–54.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Messinger, D. S., Fogel, A., & Dickson, K. L. (2001). All smiles are positive, but some smiles are more positive than others. Developmental Psychology, 37(5), 642–653.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Nadel, J., & Butterworth, G. (Eds.). (1999). Imitation in infancy (Vol. 16). Cambridge, United Kingdom: Cambridge University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Nakagawa, S., & Schielzeth, H. (2013). A general and simple method for obtaining R2 from generalized linear mixed-effects models. Methods in Ecology and Evolution, 4, 133–142.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Nakata, T., & Trehub, S. E. (2004). Infants’ responsiveness to maternal speech and singing. Infant Behavior and Development, 27(4), 455–464.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Sauter, D. A., & Eimer, M. (2010). Rapid detection of emotion from human vocalizations. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 22, 474–481.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Sauter, D. A., Eisner, F., Ekman, P., & Scott, S. K. (2010). Cross-cultural recognition of basic emotions through nonverbal emotional vocalizations. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 107, 2408–2412.

    Article  PubMed  PubMed Central  Google Scholar 

  • Scherer, K. R. (2003). Vocal communication of emotion: A review of research paradigms. Speech Communication, 40, 227–256.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Shi, R., Werker, J. F., & Harado, M. (1997, April). Maternal facial expressions provide infants with information about vowels: A cross-language study. Poster presented at the biannual meeting of the Society for Research in Child Development, Washington, DC.

  • Singh, L., Morgan, J. L., & Best, C. T. (2002). Infants’ listening preferences: Baby talk or happy talk? Infancy, 3, 365–394.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Smith, N. A., & Trainor, L. J. (2008). Infant-directed speech is modulated by infant feedback. Infancy, 13, 410–420.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Stern, D. N., Spieker, S., & MacKain, K. (1982). Intonation contours as signals in maternal speech to prelinguistic infants. Developmental Psychology, 18, 727–735.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Stroup, W. W. (2016). Generalized linear mixed models: Modern concepts, methods and applications. Boca Raton: CRC Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Tang, S. K., Chan, D. W., & Chan, K. C. (1997). Prediction of sound-pressure level in an occupied enclosure. The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 101, 2990–2993.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Tartter, V. C. (1980). Happy talk: Perceptual and acoustic effects of smiling on speech. Attention, Perception, & Psychophysics, 27, 24–27.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Trainor, L. J., Austin, C. M., & Desjardins, R. N. (2000). Is infant-directed speech prosody a result of the vocal expression of emotion? Psychological Science, 11, 188–195.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Wolff, P. H. (1987). The development of behavioral states and the expression of emotions in early infancy: New proposals for investigation. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Wood, A., Martin, J., & Niedenthal, P. (2017). Towards a social functional account of laughter: Acoustic features convey reward, affiliation, and dominance. PLoS ONE, 12, e0183811.

    Article  PubMed  PubMed Central  Google Scholar 

  • Wörmann, V., Holodynski, M., Kärtner, J., & Keller, H. (2012). A cross-cultural comparison of the development of the social smile: A longitudinal study of maternal and infant imitation in 6-and 12-week-old infants. Infant Behavior and Development, 35, 335–347.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

Authors

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Manuela Filippa.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this article

Filippa, M., Monaci, M.G. & Grandjean, D. Emotion Attribution in Nonverbal Vocal Communication Directed to Preterm Infants. J Nonverbal Behav 43, 91–104 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10919-018-0288-1

Download citation

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10919-018-0288-1

Keywords

Navigation