The interaction of glottal-pulse rate and vocal-tract length in judgements of speaker size, sex, and age

TLDR

Glottal‑pulse rate (GPR) and vocal‑tract length (VTL) are linked to a speaker’s size, sex, and age, yet how these two factors jointly shape perception remains unclear. This study investigates the interaction of GPR and VTL on listeners’ judgments of speaker size, sex, and age. The authors presented vowels scaled to represent a wide range of GPRs and VTLs—including extreme values—and asked listeners to judge speaker size and sex/age. VTL strongly influences perceived speaker size, while for normal‑range GPR and VTL values sex and age judgments are equally affected by both factors, but for abnormal low‑GPR and short‑VTL combinations VTL dominates the sex/age judgments.

Abstract

Glottal-pulse rate (GPR) and vocal-tract length (VTL) are related to the size, sex, and age of the speaker but it is not clear how the two factors combine to influence our perception of speaker size, sex, and age. This paper describes experiments designed to measure the effect of the interaction of GPR and VTL upon judgements of speaker size, sex, and age. Vowels were scaled to represent people with a wide range of GPRs and VTLs, including many well beyond the normal range of the population, and listeners were asked to judge the size and sex/age of the speaker. The judgements of speaker size show that VTL has a strong influence upon perceived speaker size. The results for the sex and age categorization (man, woman, boy, or girl) show that, for vowels with GPR and VTL values in the normal range, judgements of speaker sex and age are influenced about equally by GPR and VTL. For vowels with abnormal combinations of low GPRs and short VTLs, the VTL information appears to decide the sex/age judgement.