The role of fundamental frequency and formants in voice gender identification
Morris S. F. Poon, Manwa L. Ng · Speech Language and Hearing · 2014
PurposeThe present study examined how fundamental frequency (F0) and formant frequencies contribute to the identification of gender.MethodSpeech stimuli were synthesized from recorded voices of men and women using a formant scaling factor of 1.2 and F0 range of 100–250 Hz. Listeners who were native speakers of Cantonese were instructed to judge the perceived gender of the voice stimuli. Percent-correct gender identification of male and female stimuli at different F0–formant combinations was obtained.ResultsF0 was found to be the primary cue for gender perception and listeners showed a higher accuracy in identifying male's than female's voices.ConclusionsThe findings are consistent with results previously reported, although other acoustic cues such as voice quality may also affect gender perception.