Can the presence of tactile communication affect the newborn’s crying?

We examined the possibility that tactile communication may modulate the crying behavior during a visual stimulus presentation. The crying behavior was analyzed in relation to: a) the duration of cry-time; b) the frequency of the crying occurrences; c) the latency of the first crying; d) two cry spectrographic features (presence of hyperphonic cry and dysphonic to phonic cry ratio). Twenty newborns (4-7 hours old) were randomly assigned to two groups. In Group 1 the newborns were directly exposed to a visual stimulus presentation (a human still face). In Group 2 the newborns were involved in 8 minutes of tactile communication with an experimenter and, after a 6 minutes of pause post-communication, the newborns were exposed to the presentation of the same stimulus as in Group 1. There was no crying during the 8 minutes of communication neither during the 6 minutes of post communication. ANOVAs (p<.05) showed that during the 12 minutes of the stimulus presentation in Group 1, compared to Group 2: the mean duration of cry-time was longer; the latency of the first cry was smaller; and the percentage of dysphonic cry was greater. Hyperphonic cry was nearly absent. These results suggest that involving newborns in tactile communicative signals exchange can modulate the quantity and the quality of their crying behavior.