Fear, anger or pain, why cry baby?
Spanish researchers have studied the degree of precision that adults have to recognize the excitement caused the babies to cry. The movement of the eyes and the dynamics of crying are key in its recognition.
Spain, February 2013.- is not easy to know why cries a newborn, especially for mothers and new parents. Although the main reasons are hunger, pain, anger or fear, adults do not easily recognize what a thrill is that causes her tears.
Crying is the main way they babies communicate emotions negative and, in most cases, the only way they have of expressing them ”, explains to SINC Mariano Chóliz, researcher at the University of Valencia.
Crying is the main way that babies have to communicate negative emotions
Chóliz participates in a study, along with experts from the University of Murcia and Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia (UNED), which describes in a sample composed of 20 babies aged between 3 and 18 months the differences in the pattern of crying caused by three characteristic emotions: fear, anger, and pain.
In addition, his team noted the degree of precision that adults have to recognize the emotion that causes the crying and analyzed the emotional reaction of observers to its sob.
According to results recently published in the Spanish Journal of Psychology, the main differences arise in eye activity and dynamics of crying.
adults do not easily recognize what a thrill is that causes tears of the infants. (image: sync).
when babies cry by anger or fear remain with open eyes, while they keep them closed all the time in the case of pain ”, says researcher.
In what refers to the dynamics of the crying, both gestures and the intensity of the mourning will gradually increase if due to an anger, whereas they appear in its maximum intensity from the outset in the case of pain and fear.
Adults do not adequately identify what emotion is that induces tears, especially when it comes to anger and fear.
However, although observers do not know well recognize the cause, when babies cry because it hurts something this in adults causes a more intense emotional reaction to cry when angry or afraid ”, points Chóliz.
When babies cry by anger or fear remain with open eyes and keep them closed for the pain
for experts, the fact that the pain is easier to recognize emotion may have an Adaptive explanation, since crying is a warning of a potentially serious threat to health or survival and requires an urgent response by caregivers.
Anger, fear, pain
When a baby cries, the muscular activity of his face is characterized by a great tension in the forehead, eyebrows or lips, opening the mouth and cheek lift. The researchers observed patents between three negative emotions.
Warned Chóliz, when they are angry babies most remain half closed eyes, with a seemingly without direction or, on the contrary, fixed and prominent look. Her mouth is open or ajar, and the intensity of crying gradually increases.
In the case of fear, the eyes stay open almost all the time. Moreover, sometimes the creatures have a scrutinizing look and move the head back, and crying appears explosively, after a gradual increase in tension.
Finally, the pain manifests itself with eyes closed almost all the time, and in the few moments that are open, the opening is minimal and distant gaze. In addition, there is a high degree of tension in the eye area, and the frown. Crying, which from the beginning reaches its maximum intensity, begins so suddenly and immediately after the stimulus.
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References:
Mariano Chóliz, Enrique G. Fernández-Abascal and Francisco MartÃnez-Sánchez. Infant Crying: Pattern of Weeping, Recognition of Emotion and Affective Reactions in Observers ”. The Spanish Journal of Psychology, 2012, Vol. 15, no. 3, 978-988 ISSN 1138-7416.
