Creaky voice perception modulated by f0 and gender cues

Creaky voice has traditionally been associated with men's speech (e.g., Henton & Bladon, 1988), with acoustic work corroborating this long-standing claim (e.g., Gittelson et al., 2021; Klatt & Klatt, 1990). Since around 2010, public discourse and well-cited sociolinguistic work (e.g., Podesva, 2013; Yuasa, 2010) have perpetuated increased creak use by women, typically implementing perceptual coding. This study investigates this mismatch by testing how creaky voice perception is modulated by (perceived) speaker gender and f0. Using a matched-guise paradigm, 40 Canadian English listeners rated modal and creaky voices—altered to have ambiguously gendered formants and median f0 (115,135, 155 Hz), and paired with female and male faces—for perceived creakiness along a visual-analog scale. Bayesian regression models showed robust effects of voice quality and moderate effects of f0: creaky and lower f0 stimuli rated as creakier. We found no evidence of female faces increasing creakiness ratings overall. However, a weak interaction between face gender and f0 suggests a possible gender prototypicality effect: creakiness ratings slightly higher for female faces at low f0 and for male faces at higher f0. These results indicate that reports of increased creak in women’s voices cannot be explained by social gender bias or acoustic bias alone.