A German researcher on Tuesday disclosed that women speak at a lower average pitch than has been widely thought – only about half an octave higher than men.
Christopf Engel, a biometrics expert at the Leipzig University’s Institute for Medical Informatics, Statistics and Epidemiology told newsmen that “relevant scientific literature to date has stated that women speak at about an octave higher than men.’’
The finding was one of several during a five-year study involving some 10,000 adults from the Leipzig region by the university’s Leipzig Research Centre for Civilisation Diseases (LIFE).
Engel said phoniatric examinations of 2,500 persons led to the finding on women’s speaking pitch.
Phoniatrics is the study and treatment of the organs involved in speech production as well as of voice defects.
The biometrics expert said “it was the first time worldwide that average voice levels in a group this large could be determined.
He, therefore, called for more research to ascertain whether women deliberately lowered the pitch of their voices or whether hormones were a cause.
According to him, data collected in the study will provide important parameters for the clinical evaluation of dysphonia, or voice impairment.
The LIFE study also employed a new 3D-body-scan technique to determine body shapes and fat distribution.
Henry Loeffler-Wirth, a research fellow at Leipzig University’s Interdisciplinary Centre for Bioinformatics, noted that body scans found that “people suffering from obesity can no longer be simply differentiated into either apple- or pear-shaped.”
Of the 17 different body shapes identified in all, eight were found for obese persons alone, he said, pointing out that the refined classification system could help in detecting early signs of certain medical conditions such as metabolic disorders.
The LIFE study, which was concluded at the end of last year, was one of the largest ever undertaken by the Leipzig University Medical School as it received 42 million euros (about 47 million US dollars) in funding from the EU and the German state of Saxony.
(NAN)
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