Acoustic markers to differentiate gender in prepubescent children's speaking and singing voice
| Autor: | Martín Vivero, Catalina González, Julia Gerhard, Mirta Ramírez, María Trinidad Rivera, Marco Guzman, Natalia Marín, Daniel Muñoz, Carla Vidal |
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| Rok vydání: | 2014 |
| Předmět: |
Male
medicine.medical_specialty media_common.quotation_subject Singing Audiology Speech Acoustics Phonetics Perception Cepstrum Medicine Humans Child media_common Sex Characteristics business.industry Reproducibility of Results General Medicine Multivariate logistic regression model Inter-rater reliability Formant Logistic Models Otorhinolaryngology Pediatrics Perinatology and Child Health Voice Female business Biomarkers |
| Zdroj: | International journal of pediatric otorhinolaryngology. 78(10) |
| ISSN: | 1872-8464 |
| Popis: | Objectives Investigation sought to determine whether there is any acoustic variable to objectively differentiate gender in children with normal voices. Methods A total of 30 children, 15 boys and 15 girls, with perceptually normal voices were examined. They were between 7 and 10 years old (mean: 8.1, SD: 0.7 years). Subjects were required to perform the following phonatory tasks: (1) to phonate sustained vowels [a:], [i:], [u:], (2) to read a phonetically balanced text, and (3) to sing a song. Acoustic analysis included long-term average spectrum (LTAS), fundamental frequency (F0), speaking fundamental frequency (SFF), equivalent continuous sound level (Leq), linear predictive code (LPC) to obtain formant frequencies, perturbation measures, harmonic to noise ratio (HNR), and Cepstral peak prominence (CPP). Auditory perceptual analysis was performed by four blinded judges to determine gender. Results No significant gender-related differences were found for most acoustic variables. Perceptual assessment showed good intra and inter rater reliability for gender. Cepstrum for [a:], alpha ratio in text, shimmer for [i:], F3 in [a:], and F3 in [i:], were the parameters that composed the multivariate logistic regression model to best differentiate male and female children's voices. Conclusion Since perceptual assessment reliably detected gender, it is likely that other acoustic markers (not evaluated in the present study) are able to make clearer gender differences. For example, gender-specific patterns of intonation may be a more accurate feature for differentiating gender in children's voices. |
| Databáze: | OpenAIRE |
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