DOI: 10.5061/dryad.qc431
title: Data from: Decoding of baby calls: can adult humans identify the eliciting situation from emotional vocalizations of preverbal infants?

description: Preverbal infants often vocalize in emotionally loaded situations, yet the
 communicative potential of these vocalizations is not well understood. The
 aim of our study was to assess how accurately adult listeners extract
 information about the eliciting situation from infant preverbal
 vocalizations. Vocalizations of 19 infants aged 5-10 months were recorded
 in 3 negative (Pain, Isolation, Demand for Food) and 3 positive (Play,
 Reunion, After Feeding) situations. The recordings were later rated by 333
 adult listeners on the scales of emotional valence and intensity.
 Subsequently, the listeners assigned the eliciting situations in a forced
 choice task. Listeners were almost perfectly able to discriminate whether
 a recording came from a negative or a positive situation. Their
 discrimination may have been based on perceived valence as they
 consistently assigned higher valence when listening to positive, and lower
 valence when listening to negative, recordings. Ability to identify the
 particular situation within the negative or positive realm was
 substantially weaker, with only three of the six situations being
 discriminated above chance. The best discriminated situation, Play, was
 associated with high perceived intensity. The weak qualitative
 discrimination of negative situations seemed to be based on graded
 perception of negative recordings, from the most intense and unpleasant
 (assigned to Pain) to the least intense and least unpleasant (assigned to
 Demand for Food). Parenthood and younger age, but not gender of listeners,
 had weak positive effects on the accuracy of judgments. Our results
 indicate that adults almost flawlessly distinguish positive and negative
 infant sounds, but are rather inaccurate regarding identification of the
 specific needs of the infant and may normally employ other sensory
 channels to gain this information.
description: Assignment of recordings
 to eliciting situationsCases represent
 individual recordings. Columns C,E,G,I,K,M show numbers of raters who
 assigned each recording to pain (situation 1), play (2), isolation (3),
 reunion (4), demand for food (5) and after food (6), respectively. Columns
 D,F.H,J,L,N show the same as proportion out of the total of raters. Column
 0 shows number of raters who assigned the eliciting situation for each
 recording. Columns P and S show average rating of Intensiveness and
 Pleasantness (not the same sample of raters, but similar sample
 size).babies1.xlsxRecognition of infant vocalizations by ratersCases represent individual raters. Column B-D demographic questions (sex: 1-female, 2-male; parenting: 2-childless). E-Q ratings of intensity of individual pain recordings, R - average intensity rating of pain recordings.S-AI and AJ same for play recordings etc.DD-DP ratings of pleasantness of individual pain recordings, DQ - average pleasantness rating of pain recordings. DR-EH and EI same for play recordings etc. HC-HO assignments of pain recordings to eliciting situations: pain (1), play (2), isolation (3), reunion (4), demand for food (5), after food (6). HP - proportion of correctly recognized recordings (assigned to pain). HQ-IG and IH - same for play recordings etc. LB - average of recognition efficiency. LC, LD - recognition efficiency for positive and negative situations, respectively.babies2.xlsx