ABSTRACT

Objective: The study aimed to determine why male infants are abused more frequently than female infants.

Background: Infant crying is a well-known trigger for Shaken Baby Syndrome or Abusive Head Trauma (SBS/AHT). For unknown reasons, male infants are more often victims of SBS/AHT than female infants. We hypothesised that this sex difference in victimisation was attributable to either acoustic or movement differences between male and female infants when crying, or to gender stereotypes about infant crying (e.g. ‘boys don’t cry’).

Methods: Adult male participants rated auditory and video cry stimuli from male and female infants for aversiveness. Each infant was rated while wearing both blue and pink clothing to denote male or female gender.

Results: In two experiments, male infants spent more time producing expiratory phonations than did female infants, and this variable was positively correlated with aversiveness ratings. Including visual stimuli increased male but not female infant cry aversiveness compared with audio stimuli alone. Finally, dressing infants in blue did not increase cry aversiveness.

Conclusions: These findings suggest that both the tendency of male infants to produce more expiratory phonations when crying, as well as their visual appearance when crying, may contribute to their increased vulnerability to abuse.

摘要

目的：该研究旨在确定为什么男婴比女婴更容易受到虐待。

背景：众所周知，婴儿哭闹是婴儿摇晃综合征或虐待性头部创伤 (SBS/AHT) 的诱因。由于未知原因，男婴比女婴更常成为 SBS/AHT 的受害者。我们假设这种受害的性别差异归因于男性和女性婴儿在哭泣时的声音或动作差异，或者归因于婴儿哭泣的性别刻板印象（例如“男孩不哭”）。

方法：成年男性参与者对来自男性和女性婴儿的听觉和视频哭泣刺激的厌恶程度进行评分。每个婴儿都穿着蓝色和粉红色的衣服来表示男性或女性的性别。

结果：在两个实验中，男婴比女婴花费更多的时间来产生呼气，并且这个变量与厌恶等级呈正相关。与单独的音频刺激相比，包括视觉刺激增加了男性但不是女性婴儿的哭闹厌恶。最后，给婴儿穿蓝色衣服并没有增加哭闹的厌恶感。

结论：这些研究结果表明，男婴在哭泣时发出更多呼气发声的倾向，以及他们在哭泣时的视觉外观，都可能导致他们更容易受到虐待。