Biology Forums - Study Force

Studies show that newborns are discriminating. They can tell the difference between the sounds of

their own cries
the cries of other newborns, and
the cries of older babies

And newborns are more likely to cry only if they hear the cries of other newborns.

The evidence comes from experiments in which researchers played back audio recordings to newborns. In one study, 1-day-old babies were more likely to cry when they heard an audio tape of another newborn in distress. But when they heard recordings of their own cries, or of the cries of an 11-month-old baby, the newborns didn’t respond (Martin and Clark 1987).

A similar study found that new babies showed greater and longer lasting signs of distress when they listened to the cries of others (Dondi et al 1999).

And in case you are wondering, this isn't some newborn reflex that disappears after the first few days of life. When researchers tested babies at months 1, 3, 6 and 9, they found that older babies, like newborns, responded with distress when they heard cries of pain (Geangu et al 2010).

As neuroscientists Jean Decety and Philip Jackson note, the crying studies suggest that young babies experience one of the basic ingredients of empathy--the ability to share the emotions of another person. They also suggest that newborns have a sense of self (Decety and Jackson 2004).