When man is delivered out of his mother´s uterus into this world,he cries his first crying voice. This cry is regarded as a type of involuntary reflexive movement when the vocal cord vibration is started by the action of respiration.
This is one of a series of studies about the Korean´s first crying voice. In our maternity ward, at the Severance Hospital of Yonsei University College of Medicine, we recorded the cries of 184 babies during delivery when they were not yet separated from their umbilicus and placenta. There 81 male and 103 female babies recorded. After recording, we analyzed in respect to their pitch, voice range, rhythm, intensity, tone and the relationships between physical development and the sex of the Korean babies.
The pitch of the first crying voice were as follows;
35 cases (19%) below g¹
127 cases (69%) from a¹ to h¹
22 cases (12%) above c²
One can see therefore that the majority of cases had a pitch from a´-h1These statistics are similar to the foreign statistics done by Gutzmann,and others.
The voice ranges were as follows;
55 cases at 1 semitone
74 cases at 2 semitones
37 cases at 3 semitones
18 cases at 4 semitones
Thus giving an average for voice range statistics at 2 semitones. As far as the rhythm goes, there was a majority of 3 beats for the crescendo. The intensity varied from baay to baby which nevertheless was generally louder in the cases of healthy and heavy babies. There was no difference between the male and femle babies.
Due to oral secretion the tones of the first crying voice in most cases were not clear.
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