Human Neonatal Cry Quality as an honest signal of fitness

Abstract Care soliciting vocalizations are common in the young of many bird and mammal species. As parents are expected to assess individual offspring's potential contributions to parental fitness when partitioning resources between young, I propose that offspring solicitation displays are evolved demonstrations of phenotypic quality with which offspring compete with current and future siblings for access to parental resources. This hypothesis should apply to human neonatal crying as well as offspring solicitation in other species. In this review of the scientific literature, I test three predictions derived from this hypothesis: (1) that crying is relatively more costly for low phenotypic quality infants than infants of higher phenotypic quality; (2) that the acoustic structure of cries correlates with infant condition; and (3) that the aspects of cry structure that trigger parental emotions likely to affect investment behaviors will be those that communicate offspring condition. All predictions were supported. Acoustic characteristics tied to the neurophysiological production of cries (particularly fundamental frequency, or pitch) constitute a reliable signal of infant phenotypic quality. I conclude that in addition to asserting need, an evolved function of the human neonatal cry is to communicate phenotypic quality (and hence, likely contributions to parental fitness) to parents. The study of offspring solicitation vocalizations may contribute importantly to our understanding of animal communication systems, patterns of parental investment, and the etiology of human child abuse.

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