Perception of speaker age in children’s voices

Abstract

To study the perception of speaker age in children’s voices, adult listeners were presented with vowels in /hVd/ syllables either in isolation or in a carrier sentence, and used a graphical slider to register their estimate of the speaker’s age. The data showed a moderate correlation of perceived age and chronological age. Age estimation accuracy was fairly constant across age up to about age 11, but there was a systematic tendency for listeners to underestimate the ages of older girls. This tendency was actually enhanced when listeners were informed of the speaker’s sex. Age estimation accuracy was higher for syllables embedded in a carrier sentence. Linear regression analyses were conducted using acoustic measurements of the stimuli to predict perceived age. These analyses indicated significant contributions of fundamental frequency, duration, vowel category, formant frequencies, as well as certain measures related to the voicing source. The persistent underestimation of age for older girls, and the effect knowledge of speaker sex has on this underestimation suggest that acoustic information is combined with expectations regarding speakers of a given sex in arriving at an estimate of speaker age.