A research group led by Professor Masako Meiwa and Professor Masahiko Kawai of the Graduate School of Education, Kyoto University, has described the characteristics of spontaneous crying of preterm infants (premature infants) born less than 32 to 37 weeks gestation and newborns at term. Research.As a result, preterm infants have a greater variation in perinatal (the period from 22 weeks gestation to less than 7 days after birth) crying melody than full-term infants, and infants with this characteristic have language and cognitive development at the age of one and a half years. Discovered a new fact that is good.
So far, it has been reported that infant "crying" shows rich melody characteristics (time variation of pitch) from the newborn period, and the increasing variation of crying melody after birth means learning a language. It has been pointed out that it is important above.
The research team of Professor Masako Meiwa and others has also revealed from previous studies that the crying of premature babies has a higher pitch than that of full-term babies at the time of the expected delivery date.However, "How does the experience of preterm birth affect the melody characteristics of perinatal crying?" And "How do the characteristics of crying during this period relate to language and cognitive development after infancy?" Was not clarified.
Therefore, the research team collected pre-lactation crying with an IC recorder and performed acoustic analysis on 77 preterm babies who had grown up to the scheduled date and 30 newborn babies who had reached maturity around one week after birth.After that, when each child reached the age of one and a half years, language and cognitive development were evaluated, and the relationship with the characteristics of crying was investigated.
As a result,
・ Around the time of the expected delivery date, the crying of premature babies has a larger pitch fluctuation and a higher degree of melody complexity than that of newborn babies at term.
・ The height of the perinatal crying pitch itself is not related to language and cognitive development at the age of one and a half years.
・ Children with larger fluctuations in the pitch of crying during the perinatal period have faster language and cognitive development at the age of one and a half years, and have a larger number of vocabulary words that can be spoken.
The above has become clear.
Perinatal crying characterization is thought to be useful in detecting high-risk children with language development, and joint research with the field of machine learning (artificial intelligence) is expected to enable more accurate detection. NS.On the other hand, considering that premature infants tend to be delayed in language and cognitive development after school age and that there is a high risk of developing developmental disorders, we will follow up on the development of premature infants even after one and a half years old. We have to go.
Currently, in Japan, the birth rate of preterm infants and low birth weight infants is steadily increasing, which is the only developed country, and there is a strong demand in clinical practice for early developmental evaluation, diagnosis, and development of support methods based on scientific evidence. Has been done.
