The effect of vocal fry on pitch perception

Abstract

Vocal fry is an aperiodic phonation that is naturally associated with low pitch production. This study aims to examine whether vocal fry can affect people's perception of pitch range. A two-alternative-forced-choice task is used to test whether vocal fry can facilitate the "low pitch" perception, and non-fry and fry sounds are played in pairs. The synthetic vocal fry stimuli vary in the f0 range and the ratio of pulse-to-pulse variability. The results show that people generally hear a lower pitch during vocal fry, and the magnitude of this effect depends on the f0 range as well as the ratio of fry. Heavy fry almost always sounds lower. The finding of this study further supports the hypothesis that voice quality is integrated in pitch perception.