ABSTRACT
Crying is one of the earliest and most powerful, and occasionally the only, means available to the infant for communicating its needs to a caregiver. This “acoustical umbilical cord,” as it has been called (Ostwald, 1972), serves to connect the infant to a caregiver, its source of nurture and protection, and has been posited as an adaptive strategy in the species’ struggle for survival over the course of human evolution (Bowlby, 1969). In the first years of life, crying is largely replaced by other means of communication as children learn to express their negative emotions in ways other than crying. Changes in the frequency, eliciting circumstances, and ability to control crying, therefore, provide a vehicle for making inferences about many aspects of early development. For example, when an infant cries because a parent leaves the room, we infer that an emotional bond between that parent and child, or an attachment, has formed. When a two year old injures her finger by catching it in the refrigerator door and starts crying only upon entering the living room where her parents are seated, we understand something about her new-found intellectual ability to anticipate and manipulate the reactions of her audience. And when we see a six year old fighting back tears upon being bullied in the schoolyard, we know he is manifesting a recently acquired ability to inhibit crying and regulate his emotions. Thus, changes in crying across the life span provide a window through which biological, cognitive, and socioemotional development may be viewed.
