Role of glottal-pulse rate, vocal-tract length, and original talker upon judgements of speaker sex and age

Abstract

Glottal-pulse rate (GPR) and vocal-tract length (VTL) are important determinants of the perceived sex and age of the speaker [D. R. R. Smith and R. D. Patterson, J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 118, 3177–3186 (2005)]. Our previous research simulated the voices of variously-sized speakers of both sexes by manipulating the recorded vowels of one adult male talker. The current study explored whether there are additional cues in the voices of men, women, and children that influence judgements of speaker sex and age. We manipulated the recorded vowels of an adult man, adult woman, young boy, and young girl, and determined the effect upon the distribution of sex and age responses (man, woman, boy, girl). Results show that the distribution of sex and age judgements across the GPR-VTL plane is heavily influenced by GPR and VTL, but it is also affected by the original talker’s size (or age). The effect of original talker appears to be mainly due to the consistent difference between oral-pharyngeal length ratios of children and adults. We also report gender differences in male and female listeners across the GPR-VTL plane; adult men and women listeners show somewhat different biases. [Research supported by UK MRC (G9900369, G0500221) and German Volkswagen Foundation (1/79 783).]