A Comparison of the Use of Glottal Fry in the Spontaneous Speech of Young and Middle-Aged American Women

Objectives/hypothesis. To compare vocal fry use in spontaneous speech of young and middle-aged American women. Study Design. This is a cross-sectional study. Methods. Subjects were 40 American women; 20 aged 18-25 years (mean = 22.9 years) and 20 aged 35-50 years (mean = 43.4 years). Participants were asked to describe all the steps involved in making a peanut butter and jelly sandwich and in doing laundry. Acoustical analysis of selected parameters and sentence position of vocal fry occurrences were performed. The acoustic parameters analyzed were mean, minimum and maximum fundamental frequency (F0), glottal fry/minute ratio, and sentence position of glottal fry. Results. Values of minimum fundamental frequency clearly show that there was vocal fry in the participants' spontaneous speech samples. The average minimum F0 was 74.0 Hz (standard deviation [SD] = 5.6) for the younger women and 73.10 Hz (SD = 6.7) for the middle-aged women (P = 0.527). The mean glottal fry for the medial position and for the final position was similar for both groups. The mean glottal fry/minute ratio for young women was 13.8 (SD = 7.0), whereas for middle-aged women was 11.3 (SD = 7.5; P = 0.402). This study showed that all participants had at least one episode of glottal fry in their spontaneous speech sample. Conclusions. Both groups presented with vocal fry in their spontaneous speech, showing that vocal fry is present in the speech of young and middle-aged women.