Acoustic changes associated with transgender speech therapy: A case study.

Abstract

This case study documents acoustic changes in speech and voice characteristics over the course of several months’ therapy to feminize the voice in a male‐to‐female (M‐F) transgendered individual. Perceptual tests show that higher speaking fundamental frequency (F0) may be the only significant difference in voices perceived as female rather than male [Petit, J. M., MIT Encyclopedia of Communication Disorders, edited by R. D. Kent MIT, Cambridge, MA, 2003, pp. 223–226]. Paradoxically, however, changes in F0 alone are not sufficient to produce a feminine sounding voice. Voice quality, speech rate, and inflection also contribute to the perception of femininity. This presentation documents acoustic changes in a speaker who specifically did not wish to aggressively pursue alterations of F0, but wanted to achieve a more feminine voice by other means. Therapy goals focused on speech rate, voice quality, and prosodic patterns. Acoustic measures over the course of therapy included average F0, minimum F0, F0 variability, speech rate, rms intensity, and signal to noise ratios during selected vocalic segments. Preliminary data analyses suggest that changes in vocal quality and prosodic variability also produced F0 changes, even though these were not targeted therapeutically.