Development of discrimination and categorization of voice gender cues in school-age children

Abstract

Children's sensitivity to differences in speakers' voices continues to develop throughout childhood, but it remains unclear how it develops. In a cross-sectional design, we investigated how school-age children's discrimination, a lower-level perceptual task, and categorization, a higher-level cognitive task, of voice gender cues, fundamental frequency (F0) and vocal-tract length (VTL), develop and how these abilities are related. We used an adaptive 3AFC procedure to measure children's F0 and VTL discrimination thresholds and a categorization task to examine their weighting of F0 and VTL for voice gender categorization. Here we show that the acquisition of adult-like performance for discrimination and categorization differs across voice gender cues. Children's discrimination thresholds were adult-like around 8 years of age for VTL but still differed from adults' at 12 years of age for F0. Contrarily, children's cue weights were adult-like around 6 years of age for F0 but around 10 years of age for VTL. Therefore, the two abilities seem to develop at different rates for the different voice cues and do not seem to be closely related. Data from cochlear implant children will also be presented, as for them F0 and VTL discrimination and gender categorization depend on both cognitive development and perceptual limitations.