Perceptual and acoustic analysis of vocal registers in 10-year-old children.
Register transitions were identified by a group of five experts on child voices in recordings of 15 10-year-old children who sustained the vowel [a:] at different pitches throughout their vocal range. Two had mutational voices, seven had deviant voices and six were controls with normal voices. The control group had one register transition at a mean fundamental frequency of 511 Hz, or about 25% higher than in adult voices. This difference between adult and child voices may be because of the difference in trachea length, as proposed by Titze (J. Voice 1988; 3: 183-194). Children with either functional or physiological voice deviations exhibited a transition at a mean frequency of 417 Hz. A second transition was found in four voices at a mean frequency of 902 Hz. No correlation was found between the occurrence of register transitions and discontinuities in the upper and lower voice range profile contours.
McAllister
A
A
Department of Speech Pathology, Danderyd Hospital, Sweden.
Sederholm
E
E
Sundberg
J
J
D002648:Child; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D013060:Speech / Q000502:physiology*; D013061:Speech Acoustics; D014831:Voice / Q000502:physiology*; D014833:Voice Quality