Perception of breathiness in pediatric speakers

Abstract

Extensive research has been done to determine acoustic metrics for voice quality. However, few studies have focused on voice quality in the pediatric population. Instead, metrics evaluated on adults have directly been applied to children’s voices. Some variables, such as pitch, that differ between adult and pediatric voices, have been shown to be critical in the perception of breathiness. Furthermore, it is not known whether adults perceive voice quality similarly for pediatric and adult speakers. In this experiment, 10 listeners judged breathiness for 28 stimuli using a single-variable matching task. The stimuli were modeled after four pediatric speakers and synthesized using a Klatt-synthesizer to have a wide range of aspiration noise and open quotient. Both of these variables have been shown to influence the perception of breathiness. The resulting data were compared to that previously obtained for adult speakers using the same matching task. Comparison of adult and pediatric voices will help identify differences in the perception of breathiness for these groups of speakers and to develop more accurate metrics for voice quality in children. [Research supported by NIH (R01 DC009029).]