Speech Atic Featur: A Comparison of Gay Men, Heterosexual Men, and Heterosexual Women - PMC

Contents:

• THE GAY VOICE
• SPEECH ATIC FEATUR: A COMPARISON OF GAY MEN, HETEROSEXUAL MEN, AND HETEROSEXUAL WOMEN
• ATIC AND PERCEPTUAL CHARACTERISTICS OF MANDAR SPEECH GAY AND HETEROSEXUAL MALE SPEAKERS
• SOCIAL:GAY MALE SPEECH
• KEV SPACEY: I N’T TELL WHETHER MEN ARE GAY JT BY LOOKG AT THEM
• GAY SPEAK MORPHOLOGIL CHARACTERISTICSGAY SPEAK MORPHOLOGIL CHARACTERISTICSGAY SPEAK MORPHOLOGIL CHARACTERISTICSGAY SPEAK MORPHOLOGIL CHARACTERISTICSGAY SPEAK MORPHOLOGIL CHARACTERISTICS

THE GAY VOICE

To fill the gaps, we explored potential differenc atic featur of speech between homosexual and heterosexual native French men and vtigated whether the former showed a trend toward femizatn by parg theirs to that of heterosexual native French women. Rults showed that homosexual men displayed signifintly higher pch modulatn patterns and ls breathy voic pared to heterosexual men, wh valu shifted toward those of heterosexual women.

In addn to the fact that homosexuals exhib tras that differ om those of heterosexuals, has been shown that some of them, such as specific nral procs (LeVay, 1991; Savic, Berglund, & Ldstrom, 2005) or specific childhood behavrs (Alanko et al., 2010; Bailey & Zucker, 1995), displayed valu shifted toward those of the oppose sex, i. Although there is no clear evince that the mean fundamental equency differs between homosexual and heterosexual men (Gd, 1994; Lerman & Damsté, 1969; Munson et al., 2006b; Rendall et al., 2008; Rogers, Jabs, & Smyth, 2001; Smyth, Jabs, & Rogers, 2003; but see Baeck, Corthals, & Borsel, 2011), rults toward differenc pch modulatn patterns are more ntroversial: Some studi have found that homosexual men displayed greater variatns tonatn, wh valu shifted toward those of women (Baeck et al., 2011; Gd, 1994), while others did not fd any difference (Levon, 2006; Rogers et al., 2001).

For stance, homosexual men produce higher peak equency and longer duratn valu for /s/ (Lville, 1998) and the speech characteristics are associated wh “gayer-soundg” voic by listeners (Mack & Munson, 2012).

SPEECH ATIC FEATUR: A COMPARISON OF GAY MEN, HETEROSEXUAL MEN, AND HETEROSEXUAL WOMEN

Lastly, homosexual men seem to produce a more expand vowel space than heterosexual men for some specific vowels (Rendall et al., 2008), hyper-articulatn beg monly found female speech (Pierrehumbert et al., 2004) the atic speech featur, other characteristics uld vary wh sexual orientatn, such as vol breaths and roughns that are, rpectively, ptured by the harmonics-to-noise rat (HNR) and the jter. Although evince of a difference ttosterone levels between homosexual and heterosexual men is nsistent (Meyer-Bahlburg, 1977, 1984), ttosterone may still mediate the relatnship between sexual orientatn and the aforementned vol speech featur, which has received ltle attentn so far.

Consequently, muni of homosexual men uld potentially differ their specific vol speech featur across different this ntext, the goal of the prent study was to provi further tails on the potential differenc between homosexual and heterosexual men’s speech an unrreprented populatn the lerature (i.

ATIC AND PERCEPTUAL CHARACTERISTICS OF MANDAR SPEECH GAY AND HETEROSEXUAL MALE SPEAKERS

We vtigated the effect of sexual orientatn on four sexually dimorphic atic parameters (F0, F0-SD, jter, and HNR) and examed whether homosexual men’s vol characteristics showed a femizatn by parg theirs wh that of heterosexual women. To vtigate the effects of sexual orientatn and tt the hypothis of femizatn on the vol featur, we ed an explanatory variable lled “SexOr” that nsirs both sex and sexual orientatn wh three modali: heterosexual men, homosexual men, and heterosexual women.

Thrholds of signifince were rrected for the number of mols and post hoc parisons g the Bonferroni orr to asss the overall difference on speech atic featur between heterosexual and homosexual men and to exame whether homosexual men’s vol featur are shifted toward those of women, we nducted a lear discrimant analysis (LDA). LDA attempts to mol whether a set of variabl (here F0, F0-SD, Jter, and HNR) is effective predictg tegory membership (here heterosexual men, homosexual men, and heterosexual women).

SOCIAL:GAY MALE SPEECH

RultsDcriptive statistics of all atic parameters and T-levels are shown Table 1 Dcriptive statistics of mean F0, F0-SD, jter, HNR, speakg time, and T-levels for heterosexual men and women and homosexual menFull size tableThe teractns between T-level and “SexOr” did not have a signifint effect on mean F0 (F(2, 150) = 2. Vertil solid l reprent the mean of each group (NHeterosexual men = 48; NHomosexual men = 58, Nwomen = 54)Full size imageDiscsnThis study offers an tertg take on the teractn between sexual orientatn and atic featur of speech a French speaker sample. Sendly, our fdgs showed that French homosexual men displayed a more modulated and ls breathy voice than French heterosexual men, th supportg and extendg prev studi nducted mostly wh English speakers.

Consistent wh prev fdgs English-speakg populatns, no signifint differenc were observed mean F0 between French-speakg heterosexual and homosexual men (Gd, 1994; Lerman & Damsté, 1969; Munson et al., 2006b; Rendall et al., 2008; Rogers et al., 2001; Smyth et al., 2003). The relatnship between pch variatns and sexual orientatn was prevly found one Dutch (Baeck et al., 2011) and one Amerin-English populatn (Gd, 1994), suggtg that femized pch variatns might be characteristic of male homosexual speech across languag (but see Levon, 2006). Further vtigatns are neverthels need to nfirm if such a difference pch variatns between homosexual and heterosexual men is enough to be ed as a cue for asssg sexual our knowledge, this is the first study to report an associatn between men’s vol breaths and sexual orientatn.

80 dB), further rearch should tt whether is perceptible by listeners to asss male sexual orientatn and whether homosexual men’s voic, which are richer harmonics pared to those of heterosexuals, are perceived as more attractive among homosexual our study, T-levels did not fluence any of the atic parameters vtigated.

KEV SPACEY: I N’T TELL WHETHER MEN ARE GAY JT BY LOOKG AT THEM

For stance, exposure to prenatal ttosterone has been suggted to be rponsible for the differenc between homosexual and heterosexual men on a large range of characteristics such as physlogil and behavral tras cludg speech characteristics (Balthazart, 2017; Ehrhardt & Meyer-Bahlburg, 1981). Several studi have th tted whether the 2D:4D rat (relative length of the send and fourth digs), a proxy of ttosterone prenatal exposure differs between homosexual and heterosexual men (Balthazart, 2017; Ehrhardt & Meyer-Bahlburg, 1981).

However, there is currently no nsens regardg whether the 2D:4D rat differs between heterosexual and homosexual men as studi have yield mixed rults (Breedlove, 2017; Grimbos, Dawood, Burriss, Zucker, & Puts, 2010; Rahman & Wilson, 2003; Robson, 2000; Skorska & Bogaert, 2017; Williams et al., 2000). Regardg social mechanisms, a social imatn of women’s speech peculiari by homosexual men uld also expla the differenc observed between homosexual and heterosexual men’s speech characteristics (at least for F0-SD and HNR).

The e of more feme atic characteristics by homosexual men uld reflect a selective adoptn mol of oppose-sex speech patterns or a selective e of atic featur for signalg -group inty (Pierrehumbert et al., 2004), an abily lled “gaydar” (i. Bee some homosexual men display a greater gree of genr nonnformg behavr (GNC) than others durg childhood (Bailey & Zucker, 1995), one uld th hypothize that the former would be more likely to have a more feme speech adulthood than the latter. Further work should vtigate the relative importance of the mechanisms unrlyg homosexual men’s nclu, although our study did not aim to tt specific hypoth agast a formal theoretil amework to unrstand the differenc between homosexual and heterosexual men’s speech, provis some new scriptive fdgs.

GAY SPEAK MORPHOLOGIL CHARACTERISTICSGAY SPEAK MORPHOLOGIL CHARACTERISTICSGAY SPEAK MORPHOLOGIL CHARACTERISTICSGAY SPEAK MORPHOLOGIL CHARACTERISTICSGAY SPEAK MORPHOLOGIL CHARACTERISTICS

Further studi are need to tt whether tonatn and vol breaths are perceptually salient to distguish homosexual and heterosexual men, and whether overall differenc are due to blogil and/or soclguistic reasons. A small body of recent empiril rearch has begun to addrs the subject more systematilly and to nsir specific mechanistic hypoth to acunt for the potentially distctive featur of homosexual speech. To ntribute to this growg body of rearch, we report atic analys of 2, 875 vowel sounds om a balanced set of 125 speakers reprentg heterosexual and homosexual dividuals of each sex om southern Alberta, Canada.

There was no signifint difference mean voice pch between heterosexual and homosexual men or between heterosexual and homosexual women, but there were signifint differenc the formant equenci of vowels produced by both homosexual groups pared to their heterosexual unterparts.

The remag formant equency differenc were not obvly due to differenc vol tract anatomy between heterosexual and homosexual speakers, nor did they reflect global femizatn or masculizatn of vowel productn patterns homosexual men and women, rpectively. However, we troduce an alternative bsocial hypothis, specifilly that the distctive, vowel-specific featur of homosexual speakers relative to heterosexual speakers arise cintally as a product of broar psychobehavral differenc between the two groups that are, turn, ntuo wh and flow om the physlogil procs that affect sexual orientatn to beg wh.