Abstract:
The evaluation of a speaker's voice is often considered a social judgement. Listeners commonly base their judgements of age and sex of the speaker according to certain vocal characteristics.Several studies have investigated the contributing vocal characteristics that distinguish the maleness or femaleness of adult speakers. These findings cannot, however, be generalized to preadolescent and adolescent children.Many people believe that boys and girls have the same pitch levels before adolescence. According to previous research there is evidence to support this belief. It has been stated that preadolescent children share, in general, similar characteristics in relation to the vocal mechanisms of pitch and laryngeal size (Kahane, 1975).The purpose of this study is to determine if listeners can correctly identify the gender of six and seven year-old children from individually recorded reading passages.