You can know why a baby cries?

"Crying is the main way that babies have to communicate negative emotions and, in most cases, the only way they have to express them," says Mariano Choliz, a researcher at the University of Valencia, in statements to the SINC agency. Analyzing the differences in the pattern of crying caused by three characteristic emotions (fear, anger and pain), his team identified that the main differences are in ocular activity and in the dynamics of crying. According to the results, published in the Spanish Journal of Psychology, when they are angry most babies keep their eyes half-closed, with a seemingly un-directed gaze or, on the contrary, fixed. In the case of fear, the eyes remain open almost all the time, sometimes even the creatures have a scrutinizing look and move the head backwards, and the cry appears explosively. Finally, the pain manifests itself with closed eyes almost all the time, and in the few moments when they are open, the opening is minimal and distant from the gaze. In addition, when something hurts there is a high degree of tension in the eye area and frowning.

In regard to the dynamics of crying, both the gestures and the intensity of the cry are gradually increased if it is due to an anger, while they appear at their maximum intensity from the first moment in the case of pain and fear.

In addition, the work reveals that adults do not adequately identify what emotion is the one that induces crying, especially when it comes to anger and fear. However, "although the observers do not know how to recognize the cause, when babies cry because something hurts them, this provokes a more intense affective reaction in adults than when they cry because they are angry or afraid," says Chóliz. For experts, the fact that pain is the most easily recognized emotion may have an adaptive explanation, since crying is a warning of a potentially serious threat to health or survival and requires a more urgent response by caregivers .