RESUMEN
This study investigated the possibility that one function of the human infant's cry is to convey individual identity across distance. Six-hundred adults, having been exposed to 30 s of an infant's crying, were asked to identify this infant on the basis of other, experimentally altered, cries. The cries were altered naturally by rerecording across distance in the out-of-doors, and artificially by bandpass filtering and temporal reorganization. The individuality of cries proved remarkably robust to degradation: Only when frequencies were limited to the range of 8 to 10 kHz was recognition performance significantly impaired. It is argued that the human infant's cry, a complex signal with multiple markers of individuality, may have among its functions the communication of infants' identities across distance.
Asunto(s)
Atención , Percepción Auditiva , Llanto/psicología , Individualidad , Adolescente , Aprendizaje Discriminativo , Femenino , Humanos , Lactante , Masculino , Discriminación de la Altura TonalRESUMEN
The present study investigated neuropsychological functioning in school-age children at various points in time surrounding a hypoglycemic episode using 13 tasks drawn from age-appropriate, standard neuropsychological tests. The results demonstrate the effects of a hypoglycemic episode on neuropsychological functioning even after detectable physical symptoms have subsided. Although we are unable to delineate clearly their temporal course, it appears that the impact of such episodes is transient. In general, the pattern exhibited by these children who have presumably recovered from their mild hypoglycemic episode involved reduced motor performance, attention, and memory. The observed prolonged recovery time of these functions presents important implications for the child in both school and social settings.