Towards a standardized terminology and methodology for the measurement of durational pain cry characteristics

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Abstract
This contribution is the second part of a research project attempting to provide a tentative basis for the standardization of the terminology and methodology for the acoustic analysis of induced pain cries. The first part of the study [Raes & Dehaen, 1988] described the vocabulary and the techniques for the objective and uniform segmentation of pain cry series represented on acoustic registrations. The present paper provides a detailed description of the terms and methods necessary for the accurate and uniform durational analysis of pain cry series segmented according to these basic principles. The durational measuring system comprises eight characteristics: reaction time, total crying time, total phonation time, latency, duration, phonation time, pause and continuity. Comparatively applied to a collection of pain cry series from healthy babies and one from abnormal infants, the system proved to have a very considerable capacity to differentiate between normality and abnormality.