Spontaneous Voice Gender Imitation Abilities in Adult Speakers

Background The frequency components of the human voice play a major role in signalling the gender of the speaker. A voice imitation study was conducted to investigate individuals' ability to make behavioural adjustments to fundamental frequency (F0), and formants (Fi) in order to manipulate their expression of voice gender. Methodology/Principal Findings Thirty-two native British-English adult speakers were asked to read out loud different types of text (words, sentence, passage) using their normal voice and then while sounding as ‘masculine’ and ‘feminine’ as possible. Overall, the results show that both men and women raised their F0 and Fi when feminising their voice, and lowered their F0 and Fi when masculinising their voice. Conclusions/Significance These observations suggest that adult speakers are capable of spontaneous glottal and vocal tract length adjustments to express masculinity and femininity in their voice. These results point to a “gender code”, where speakers make a conventionalized use of the existing sex dimorphism to vary the expression of their gender and gender-related attributes

ANOVA table for the acoustic parameters in passage task (N = 32).

<p>F-ratio (F) and p-value (p) for: mean fundamental frequency (F0mean), coefficient of variation (F0CV), first four formant frequencies (F1–F4) and formant spacing (ΔF). Significant effects are indicated with an asterisk.</p

Within-sex contrasts for the acoustic parameters across conditions in male speakers.

<p>F-ratio (F) and p-value (p) for: mean fundamental frequency (F0mean), coefficient of variation (F0CV), first four formant frequencies (F1–F4) and formant spacing (ΔF). Significant effects are indicated with an asterisk. “Masc” and “Fem” represent the masculinised and feminised conditions.</p

Mean and Standard Deviation (SD) of female speakers' acoustic parameters.

<p>Mean and SD values (Hz) for: mean fundamental frequency (F0mean), coefficient of variation (F0CV), first four formant frequencies (F1–F4) and formant spacing (ΔF). “Masc” and “Fem” represent the masculinised and feminised conditions.</p

Mean, standard deviation (SD) and contrasts for Lip spreading (LS), Lip Openness (LO) and Lip ratio.

<p>Significant effects are indicated with an asterisk. “Masc” and “Fem” represent the masculinised and feminised conditions.</p

Formant values across vowels within each condition for male and female speakers.

<p>The error bar graphs show the mean (±95%CI) frequency values of the first four formant (F1–F4) across vowels and within each condition (masculine, neutral and feminine) for male (A) and female (B) speakers.</p

ANOVA table for the acoustic parameters in sentence task (N = 32).

<p>F-ratio (F) and p-value (p) for: mean fundamental frequency (F0mean), coefficient of variation (F0CV), first four formant frequencies (F1–F4) and formant spacing (ΔF). Significant effects are indicated with an asterisk.</p

Within-sex contrasts for the acoustic parameters across conditions in female speakers.

<p>F-ratio (F) and p-value (p) for: mean fundamental frequency (F0mean), coefficient of variation (F0CV), first four formant frequencies (F1–F4) and formant spacing (ΔF). Significant effects are indicated with an asterisk. “Masc” and “Fem” represent the masculinised and feminised conditions.</p

Mean and Standard Deviation (SD) of male speakers' acoustic parameters.

<p>Mean and SD values (Hz) for: mean fundamental frequency (F0mean), coefficient of variation (F0CV), first four formant frequencies (F1–F4) and formant spacing (ΔF). “Masc” and “Fem” represent the masculinised and feminised conditions.</p

ANOVA table for the acoustic parameters in vowel task (N = 31).

<p>F-ratio (F) and p-value (p) for: mean fundamental frequency (F0mean), coefficient of variation (F0CV), first four formant frequencies (F1–F4) and formant spacing (ΔF). Significant effects are indicated with an asterisk.</p