Is the speaking fundamental frequency in females related to body height?

Abstract

The aim of the study was to determine the impact of body height on speaking fundamental frequency (SF0) while controlling for as many as possible influencing factors such as habits, biophysical conditions, medication, diseases, and others. Fifty-eight females were analyzed during spontaneous speech (i.e. explaining driving directions or a cooking recipe) of at least 60 seconds at comfortable pitch and loudness. The subjects showed a moderate negative and significant correlation between body height and SF0 (r = -0.40, P = 0.002). With r(2) = 0.16, however, a reasonable portion (16%) of the variance in SF0 is explained by the variance in body height. In comparison with other factors for which a correlation with SF0 was mentioned in literature (hypothyrodism, hemodialysis, auditory-maleness after female-to-male transsexualism, body weight, body mass index, and body fat), body height accounted for most of the proportion of SF0 in females. It is therefore possible to validate body height as a factor to account for in clinical F0 measurement.

Body Perception From Connected Speech: Speaker Height Discrimination from Natural Sentences and Sine-Wave Replicas with and without Pitch

“…We also, included the average frequency of the three formants, and the dispersion between formants [((F2 À F1) + (F3 À F2))/2]. The correlations within the same sex group between speakers' heights and speech parameters were generally null or moderate, consistent with what has been found by other investigators (Barsties, et al, 2016;González, 2004;2006;Owren, 2011;Pawelec, et al, 2020; for a review see Pisanski et al, 2014b). The highest correlations with speakers' heights corresponded to the second formant (F2, r = À.306, accounting for 9.4% of the variance or r 2 ) for male speakers, the second formant (F2, r = À.472, accounting for 22.3% of the variance), and the formant average (r = À.355; accounting for 12.6% of the variance) for female speakers.…”

The Speaking Voice in the General Population: Normative Data and Associations to Sociodemographic and Lifestyle Factors

“…29 Thus, the effects of different measurement methods have to be considered. 30,31 This is especially important as there is currently no standard procedure for measuring speaking voice. Participants in our study were asked to count in order to measure the aforementioned speaking voice parameters, while in other countries physicians are more accustomed to using other stimuli, such as reading a paragraph of the "Rainbow Passage".…”

Nachweis von relevanten Veränderungen der Sprechstimme bei Frauen, gemessen im Sprechstimmprofil

“…Vergleicht man die Werte der gemessenen Frequenzen in unserer Kohorte mit älteren Studien zur weiblichen Stimme 25 26 27 , fallen besonders die deutlich niedrigeren Werte der Grundfrequenzen der mSSL auf, die einen vermuteten Trend zu einer tieferen Frauenstimme unterstützen. Obwohl bekannt ist, dass bedingt durch verschiedene Messmethoden zur Erfassung des mSSL (häufig wird im angloamerikanischen Raum die „rainbow-passage“ 28 vorgelesen) unterschiedliche Grundfrequenzen resultieren 29 , erklären diese die Unterschiede nicht vollumfänglich. Russel et al 4 haben bereits 1995 in einer prospektiven Stimmanalyse, bei der innerhalb von 48 Jahren ein Frequenzabfall von 47,8 Hz der untersuchten Frauen nachgewiesen wurde, zusätzlich einen generationsbedingten Abfall der Frequenz der Frauenstimme thematisiert.…”

“…Die Motivierbarkeit und die Bereitschaft, sich vor fremden Personen zu präsentieren, haben einen relevanten Einfluss auf die Ergebnisse der Stimmfeldmessung 29 . Unsere Ergebnisse zeigen, dass der sozioökonomische Status positiv mit einer größeren Bandbreite und Dynamik der Sprechstimme korreliert.…”