The acoustic and perceptual correlates of gender in children's voices

• Applicant: Professor Dr. Adrian Paul Simpson
• Subject Area: General and Comparative Linguistics, Experimental Linguistics, Typology, Non-European Languages
• Term: since 2020
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 440882807

Until puberty there are hardly any anatomical and physiological differences in the vocal apparatus of girls and boys. Nevertheless, gender-specific differences have repeatedly been found in prepubertal voices, in some cases from the age of two and a half years. In addition, adult listeners are able to identify the sex from a child's voice better than chance. In individual cases, recognition even rises well above 90% and reaches gender recognition values otherwise found in adult voices.In recent years, the construction of gender in childhood has attracted increasing interest, not least due to a sharp increase in the number of children in Germany and other countries diagnosed with gender dysphoria. The study of the vocal expression of gender thus has a high social relevance as well as a scientific one. In the proposed project, the perceptual and acoustic correlates of gender in prepubertal voices will be investigated in a long-term study. Recordings of the same primary school children will be made at three points in time (1st-3rd grade). There are only very few studies on the vocal expression of gender in children with German mother tongue and, as yet, no long-term study.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants