Seminar | Developmental patterns of pitch variations in speech: a new approach

Common methods for capturing suprasegmental variability in fundamental frequency (ƒ₀) include determining the range between the maximum and minimum ƒ₀ values within a specific utterance and calculating the standard deviation (or the mean normalized standard deviation, known as the coefficient of variation) of all ƒ₀ values in that utterance. While both methods assess global variability, they unfortunately lack sensitivity to local variability. Therefore, I proposed a new approach to capture suprasegmental ƒ0 variability—both globally and locally—within an utterance. I tested this method using a corpus that included three age groups of English-speaking children and one group of adults. In this talk, I will first outline the background of pitch development from childhood to adulthood. Then, I will explain the calculation steps of my proposed method, followed by the results on ƒ₀ development derived from this approach, compared to the traditional ƒ₀ range and coefficient of variation.