Vocal Indicators of Size, Shape and Body Composition in Polish Men

Pawelec, Łukasz; Graja, Katarzyna; Lipowicz, Anna

doi:10.1016/j.jvoice.2020.09.011

Cited by 6 publications

(7 citation statements)

References 91 publications

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“…We also, included the average frequency of the three formants, and the dispersion between formants [((F2 − F1) + (F3 − F2))/2]. The correlations within the same sex group between speakers’ heights and speech parameters were generally null or moderate, consistent with what has been found by other investigators (Barsties, et al, 2016; González, 2004; 2006; Owren, 2011; Pawelec, et al, 2020; for a review see Pisanski et al, 2014b). The highest correlations with speakers’ heights corresponded to the second formant (F2, r = −.306, accounting for 9.4% of the variance or r 2 ) for male speakers, the second formant (F2, r = −.472, accounting for 22.3% of the variance), and the formant average ( r = −.355; accounting for 12.6% of the variance) for female speakers.…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 74%

Body Perception From Connected Speech: Speaker Height Discrimination from Natural Sentences and Sine-Wave Replicas with and without Pitch

González-Álvarez

Sos‐Peña

2023

Percept Mot Skills

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In addition to language, the human voice carries information about the physical characteristics of speakers, including their body size (height and weight). The fundamental speaking frequency, perceived as voice pitch, and the formant frequencies, or resonators of the vocal tract, are the acoustic speech parameters that have been most intensely studied for perceiving a speaker’s body size. In this study, we created sine-wave (SW) replicas of connected speech (sentences) uttered by 20 male and 20 female speakers, consisting of three time-varying sinusoidal waves matching the frequency pattern of the first three formants of each sentence. These stimuli only provide information about the formant frequencies of a speech signal. We also created a new experimental condition by adding a sinusoidal replica of the voice pitch of each sentence. Results obtained from a binary discrimination task revealed that (a) our SW replicas provided sufficient useful information to accurately judge the speakers’ body height at an above chance level; (b) adding the sinusoidal replica about the voice pitch did not significantly increase accuracy; and (c) stimuli from female speakers were more informative for body height detection and allowed higher perceptual accuracy, due to a stronger correlation between formant frequencies and actual body height than stimuli from male speakers.

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Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 74%

Body Perception From Connected Speech: Speaker Height Discrimination from Natural Sentences and Sine-Wave Replicas with and without Pitch

González-Álvarez

Sos‐Peña

2023

Percept Mot Skills

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“…Furthermore, men with higher Df were rated as having greater BMI. In contrast, other studies show that larger individuals (taller, heavier) have lower spread of formant values (Evans et al 2006;González 2004;Pawelec et al 2022a;Pisanski et al 2014). In addition, Collins (2000) found that men with lower formants were assessed as taller, heavier, and more muscular, while Sell et al (2006) found that men with lower Df are perceived as physically stronger.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 89%

“…All sound files were recorded with equal sampling frequency (44.1 kHz, 16bit resolution) as uncompressed format mono files (.wav). The similar procedure was previously described in Pawelec et al (2022a;2022b).…”

Section: Speakers A) Procedures For Speaker's Selectionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Voice is an extremely important biological signal for almost all living organisms, including humans. Human voice can convey a relevant information, such as sex (Wolfe et al 1990), age (Tarafder et al 2012), emotions (Raine et al 2019;Sondhi et al 2015), stimulants used (Byeon and Cha 2020;Moreira et al 2015), body size/shape (Evans et al 2006;Pawelec et al 2022a;Pisanski et al 2014;2016;Rendall et al 2005; and body composition (Hamdan et al 2012;2013b). There have been plenty of studies aiming to determine the listeners' ability to correctly estimate biological traits of a speaker.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Human voice provides a lot of information about the body structure (Pawelec et al 2022a;Pisanski et al 2014), and it is also a very important biological signal that plays an important role in malemale competition and sexual selection (Collins 2000;Gregory 1994;Oguchi & Kikuchi 1997;Puts et al 2006), as well as it contains information about the individual's health (Arnocky et al 2018;Barties et al 2013;Sidorova et al 2020). Therefore, as the excessive content of adipose tissue in the body (obesity) deteriorates the biological quality of an individual and an evolutionary importance of recognizing biological quality (fitness) of healthy or sick person, the question arises whether it is possible to correctly subjectively assess obesity level of an individual based only on the voice.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Assessment of the obesity based on voice perception

Pawelec

Kierczak

Lipowicz

2023

Self Cite

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Human voice is an extremely important biological signal which contains information about sex, age, emotional state, health and physical features of a speaker. Estimating a physical appearance from a vocal cue can be an important asset for sciences including forensics and dietetics. Although there have been several studies focused on the relationships between vocal parameters and ratings of height, weight, age and musculature of a speaker, to our knowledge, there has not been a study examining the assessment of one’s BMI based on voice alone. The purpose of the current study was to determine the ability of female “Judges” to evaluate speakers’ (men and women) obesity and body fat distribution from their vocal cues. It has also been checked which voice parameters are key vocal cues in this assessment. The study material consisted of 12 adult speakers’ (6 women) voice recordings assessed by 87 “Judges” based on a 5-point graphic scale presenting body fat level and distribution (separately for men and women). For each speaker body height, weight, BMI, Visceral Fat Level (VFL, InBody 270) and acoustic parameters were measured. In addition, the accuracy of BMI category was verified. This study also aimed to determine which vocal parameters were cues for the assessment for men and women. To achieve it, two independent experiments were conducted: I: “Judges” had to choose one (obese) speaker from 3 voices (in 4 series); II: they were asked to rate body fat level of the same 12 speakers based on 5-point graphic scale. Obese speakers (i.e., BMI above 30) were selected correctly with the accuracy greater than predicted by chance (experiment I). By using a graphic scale, our study found that speakers exhibiting higher BMI were rated as fatter (experiment II). For male speakers the most important vocal predictors of the BMI were harmonics-to-noise ratio (HNR) and formant dispersion (Df); for women: formant spacing (Pf) and intensity (loudness). Human voice contains information about one’s increased BMI level which are hidden in some vocal cues.

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