A perceptual and acoustic study of voice gender in prepubertal children

Abstract

Purpose: The present study attempted to investigate the sexual dimorphism in prepubertal children's voice and their implicit knowledge on voice gender.Methods: Fundamental frequency (F0) and the first two formant frequencies (F1 and F2) of voice samples produced by 25 male and 26 female Cantonese-speaking prepubertal children produced under two speaking conditions: (1) natural condition, and (2) imitation condition when mimicking the opposite gender voice were examined.Results: Accuracy of gender identification by adult listeners for voices associated with the natural and imitation conditions was 81.7% and 59.5% respectively. In addition to the lack of difference in F0 between genders under the natural condition, F1 and F2 associated with boys were lower than those with girls, suggesting differences in vocal tract length and possible sex-specific articulatory behaviors between boys and girls, in an attempt to enhance sexual dimorphism for gender voice identification. Under the imitation condition, boys exhibited significantly higher F0 and F1 than girls.Conclusion: Prepubertal children possessed the implicit knowledge of sexually dimorphic acoustic correlates (F0 and F1) and were capable of altering the rate of vocal fold vibration and the effective vocal tract length at will to render vocal characteristics of the opposite sex.