Perception of synthetic vowel exemplars of 4 year old children and estimation of their corresponding vocal tract shapes

Formant scalings for vowel exemplars of American 4 year olds who were imitating adult production were used along with published data of American adult male vowel production to synthesize /ɑ, æ, u, i/. Other vowel exemplars were also synthesized. Adult listeners were asked to categorize these synthetic vowels in a forced choice task. With some exceptions, the formant frequencies preferred for the vowels /ɑ, æ, u, i/ were close to the published data. In order to gain insight on children's articulation during imitation of vowels /ɑ, æ, u, i/, a five-tube model was used in an algorithm to infer vocal tract shape from the first three formant frequencies of the adult productions, the formant frequencies derived for 4 year olds by scaling, and formant frequencies for 4 year olds derived based on the listening experiments. It was found that the rear tube length for the children, in proportionate terms, was nearly always greater than that of the adult. The rear tube length was proportionately twice as long in children compared to adults for the vowel /u/. Tongue root flexibility and the oblique angle between the pharynx and mouth may be more important than pharynx length in determining formant scalings for 4 year old children.