AN ACOUSTICAL STUDY OF VOCAL PITCH IN SEVEN- AND EIGHT-YEAR-OLD GIRLS

The present study is a companion to that of Fairbanks, Wiley, and Lassman (3), who studied the vocal pitch of sevenand eight-year-old boys, and differs only in the sex of the subjects. Changes in the vocal pitch of the female during early life undoubtedly take place, but the extent of the changes, although presumably much smaller than in the male, has not been investigated. As a matter of fact, unlike the situation in studies of male voice, the literature provides no satisfactory information regarding vocal pitch in average females at any age level. The present study, probably for the first time, presents acoustical data on the vocal pitch of girls. The pitch level of speech, because of its relationship to growth of the larynx, is of major interest, and this study is the first in a program of acoustical investigations designed to permit the plotting of a curve of pitch level as a function of age in the female. Comparable curves for males and females will differ greatly from adolescence on, but the differences or similarities during pre-adolescent years are not to be predicted on the basis of present information. The present study, taken in conjunction with its companion (3), begins to throw some light in this direction. Voice breaks in the male adolescent are phenomena of common experience, and have been studied acoustically by Curry (i), and by Fairbanks, Wiley, and Lassman (3). In the former study a group of ten-year-old preadolescent controls were found to have voice breaks similar to those of