Some acoustic characteristics of oral reading by ten- to twelve-year-old children.
In contrast to the amount of information available on acoustic characteristics of adults' effective speech, little data are available on children's vocal effectiveness. A study, therefore, has been initiated to examine the relationship between some acoustic characteristics and listener judgments of children's vocal effectiveness. This paper reports the results of the first part of the study, that is, the acoustic analysis of oral reading by 36 10- to 12-yr-old children. The voice fundamental frequency characteristics, speaking time, pause time, and phonation-time ratio were measured using an automatic analysis method. Effects of the passage, repeated readings, and speaker sex are discussed.
D002648:Child; D002663:Child Language; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D011932:Reading; D012737:Sex Factors; D013060:Speech; D013061:Speech Acoustics; D013997:Time Factors; D014831:Voice