Perception of age, gender, and talker height from children’s vowels

In his 1989 review of vowel perception J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 85, 2088–2113, Terry Nearey observed that the acoustic properties of vowels vary substantially across talkers due to differences in talker size. Taller speakers tend to have lower formant frequencies and lower fundamental frequencies than shorter speakers, and listeners appear to take these relationships into account in vowel identification. In this talk, we follow up some of the questions raised in that paper, reviewing recent findings on the perception of age, gender, and talker height in children’s voices. Children exhibit substantial age-related changes in fundamental and formant frequencies due to growth of the larynx and vocal tract, presenting an interesting opportunity to explore the perceptual consequences of these changes. Listeners’ perceptual judgments of age and gender reveal complex interdependencies, consistent with the idea that these indexical attributes are jointly estimated, in a manner that reflects their shared dependence on acoustic parameters related to perceived talker height.