Identification of speaker sex from one vowel across a range of fundamental frequencies
| Number | 1616 |
|---|---|
| Year | 2010 |
| Drawer | 28 |
| Entry Date | 08/08/2011 |
| Authors | Honorof, D.N. & Whalen, D.H. |
| Contact | |
| Publication | Journal of Acoustical Society of America, v. 128(5), 2010, pp. 3095-3104. |
| url | http://www.haskins.yale.edu/Reprints/HL1616.pdf |
| Abstract | To identify a speaker’s sex, listeners may rely on sex-based differences in average fundamental frequency F0, but overlap in male and female F0 ranges undermines such judgments. To test accuracy of sex-identification throughout the F0 range, listeners were asked to judge sex based on audio recordings of /Ä/ spoken on a number of overlapping steady F0s by 10 male and 10 female English speakers. In general, listeners performed above chance 71.6% correct. However, near range extrema, listeners followed an apparent bias toward hearing high F0s as female and low as male; confidence was high when accuracy was high and vice-versa. At mid-range, listeners identified sex fairly accurately but were not very confident in their judgments. In a forced-choice task, vowels close in F0 but beyond the difference limen were presented in male-female or female-male pairs. Listeners weakly identified speaker sex 63.3% correct. Identification of the male voice was considerably above chance only when the male had the lower F0 of the pair. Reliance on stereotypes of speaking F0 may bias listeners to hear low F0s as male and high F0s as female, perhaps with a contribution from vocal-tract length information. No strong evidence for a contribution of voice quality obtained. |
| Notes |
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