The acoustic bases for gender identification from children’s voices

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to examine the acoustic characteristics of children's speech and voices that account for listeners' ability to identify gender. In Experiment I, vocal recordings and gross physical measurements of 4-, 8-, 12-, and 16-year olds were taken (10 girls and 10 boys per age group). The speech sample consisted of seven nondiphthongal vowels of American English (/ae/ "had," /E/ "head," /i/ "heed," /I/ "hid," /a/ "hod," /inverted v/ "hud," and /u/ "who'd") produced in the carrier phrase, "Say /hVd/ again." Fundamental frequency (f0) and formant frequencies (F1, F2, F3) were measured from these syllables. In Experiment II, 20 adults rated the syllables produced by the children in Experiment I based on a six-point gender rating scale. The results from these experiments indicate (1) vowel formant frequencies differentiate gender for children as young as four years of age, while formant frequencies and f0 differentiate gender after 12 years of age, (2) the relationship between gross measures of physical size and vocal characteristics is apparent for at least 12- and 16-year olds, and (3) listeners can identify gender from the speech and voice of children as young as four years of age, and with respect to young children, listeners appear to base their gender ratings on vowel formant frequencies. The findings are discussed in relation to the development of gender identity and its perceptual representation in speech and voice.

Novelty and social preference in phonetic accommodation

“…Indeed, young language learners begin to show preferential patterns of language acquisition early on in production. For example, children show gender-specific speech patterns prior to the onset of puberty-induced anatomical differences (Sachs et al 1973;Perry et al 2001; though see Vorperian et al [2009] for recent evidence of sex differences in vocal tract anatomy prior to puberty). This suggests that gendered speech patterns are at least somewhat learned, with young boys and girls modeling their speech patterns on select input, not an aggregate of all spoken language they have been exposed to.…”

The role of voice source measures on automatic gender classification

“…These findings imply that, overall, boys have larger vocal tracts than girls. In [6], statistical analysis of children speech confirmed that formant frequencies (F1, F2, F3), and not F0, differentiate gender for children as young as four years of age, while formant frequencies plus F 0 differentiate gender after 12 years of age. These findings lead to the conclusion that for preadolescent children, vocal tract measures play a bigger role for gender classification than the voice source measure F 0 .…”

Frequência fundamental das 7 vogais orais do português em vozes de crianças

“…Ao avaliar a f 0 e frequências dos três primeiros formantes, um grupo de autores 27 apontou diferenças somente a partir dos 11 anos de idade. Outros pesquisadores 28 concluíram que embora a análise das frequências dos formantes tivesse permitido a diferenciação entre os sexos em crianças a partir de quatro anos de idade, a análise da f 0 só pôde diferenciar os sexos a partir dos 12 anos.…”