The Way You Pronounce the Letter 'S' Reveals Your Gender
How can you tell if a person is male or female just by his or her voice?
By Makini Brice | Jan 04, 2013 03:04 PM EST
http://www.medicaldaily.com/articles/13766/20130104/way-pronounce-letter-s-reveals-gender.htmHow can you tell if a person is male or female just by their voice? In general, men have deeper voices than women. However, according to a study conducted by Lal Zimman, a doctoral student at The University of Colorado - Boulder at the time of his research, the style of speech can impact perceptions of a person's gender as well, not simply the pitch of his or her voice. In fact, the letter "S" can, on its own, impact people's perception of the speaker's gender.
Zimman studied 15 transgender individuals in the San Francisco Bay Area who were in the process of transitioning from female to male. As part of the transition, Zimman's participants received the hormone testosterone in order to lower the pitches of their voices. Zimman recorded the participants, taking care to measure the frequency of the letter "S". In order to determine the effect that the letter had on 10 listeners, he digitally manipulated the frequency of the speaker's voice, sliding the pitch higher and lower. The listeners then had to assess whether the speaker was male or female.
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Pronunciation of 's' sounds impacts perception of gender, researcher finds January 4, 2013 in Psychology & Psychiatry (Medical Xpress)
http://medicalxpress.com/news/2013-01-pronunciation-impacts-perception-gender.html—A person's style of speech—not just the pitch of his or her voice—may help determine whether the listener perceives the speaker to be male or female, according to a University of Colorado Boulder researcher who studied transgender people transitioning from female to male. The way people pronounce their "s" sounds and the amount of resonance they use when speaking contributes to the perception of gender, according to Lal Zimman, whose findings are based on research he completed while earning his doctoral degree from CU-Boulder's linguistics department. Zimman, who graduated in August, is presenting his research Jan. 5 at the annual meeting of the Linguistic Society of America in Boston. "In the past, gender differences in the voice have been understood, primarily, as a biological difference," Zimman said. "I really wanted to look at the potential for other factors, other than how testosterone lowers the voice, to affect how a person's voice is perceived."
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Pronunciation style of letter 'S' reveals one's gender
By ANI | ANI – 9 hours ago
http://in.news.yahoo.com/pronunciation-style-letter-reveals-ones-gender-091858227.htmlWashington, January 5 (ANI): How can you tell if a person is male or female just by their voice?
A new study has found that the style of speech can impact perceptions of a person's gender as well, not simply the pitch of his or her voice.
The way people pronounce their "s" sounds and the amount of resonance they use when speaking contributes to the perception of gender, according to University of Colorado Boulder researcher Lal Zimman.
"In the past, gender differences in the voice have been understood, primarily, as a biological difference," Zimman, who studied transgender people transitioning from female to male, said.
