Development of the child’s voice: premutation, mutation

Investigation of habitual pitch during free play activities for preschool-aged children

“…To date, the widely used activities for speech/ voice sample collection based on which the HP is extracted are structured activities [12][13][14][15][16][17][18]. Recording speech/voice samples using structured activities usually requires participants, regardless of their age, to speak or phonate as instructed [10,[12][13][14][15][16][17][18].…”

“…Recording speech/voice samples using structured activities usually requires participants, regardless of their age, to speak or phonate as instructed [10,[12][13][14][15][16][17][18]. For instance, young children are usually instructed to read preselected passages [12,16,17,[19][20][21]17], to repeat after a model (e.g., the adult examiner) [14], or to tell stories based on picture descriptions [17]. Assessing HP in structured activities is generally a suitable approach for adults due to the relatively small variations in F 0 or HP over time [13].…”

“…For decades, the F 0 and its related features (such as F 0 variability and jitter) have been extensively investigated to determine developmental changes in the normal voice of children with a widely ranging age span of 8 months [22] to 15 years [14,[16][17][18][19][20][21]23,24]. F 0 investigations have also been conducted for children from various racial groups [12,25] and for children who stutter [26].…”

“…F 0 investigations have also been conducted for children from various racial groups [12,25] and for children who stutter [26]. The average F 0 for preschoolers (i.e., children whose ages are from 3 years to 6 years) has been reported to range from 214 Hz to 350 Hz for both girls and boys [12,16,17,19,20,27,28]. Little difference in F 0 has been found between pre-pubescent (specifically younger than 7 years old) girls and boys [12,16,17,19,20,22,[27][28][29].…”

“…The average F 0 for preschoolers (i.e., children whose ages are from 3 years to 6 years) has been reported to range from 214 Hz to 350 Hz for both girls and boys [12,16,17,19,20,27,28]. Little difference in F 0 has been found between pre-pubescent (specifically younger than 7 years old) girls and boys [12,16,17,19,20,22,[27][28][29]. A general pattern of decreasing F 0 and F 0 variability has been reported for young children as their ages increase [12,19,20,22,23,25].…”