Expression and perception of gender in prepubertal children's voice : an acoustic study

Abstract

The present study described the fundamental frequency (f0) and the first two formant frequencies (F1 and F2) obtained from voice samples produced by 25 male and 26 female Cantonese-speaking prepubertal children under natural (neutral) condition and upon request to mimic the opposite gender voice (imitation condition), to investigate sexual dimorphism in prepubertal children’s voice and to assess their implicit knowledge on voice gender. Average accuracy of voice gender identification by adult listeners was 81.7% and 41.1% for prepubertal children’s voice gender produced under neutral and imitation conditions respectively. No significant difference in f0 was found between genders under neutral condition, suggesting similar vocal mechanism for prepubertal boys and girls. Average F1 and F2 associated with boys were lower than that with girls. It was suggested that both difference in vocal tract length, and the sex-specific articulatory behaviors contributed to the differences in formant frequencies, thus enhancing sexual dimorphism for gender voice identification. Under imitation condition, boys exhibited significantly higher f0 than girls. F1 associated with boys was also higher than that with girls. It could be concluded that prepubertal children had the implicit knowledge on the sexually dimorphic acoustic correlates (f0 and F1) and were capable in altering the vibration rate of vocal folds and the effective vocal tract length upon request to conform to vocal characteristics of the opposite gender.