ArticleScientific reports2016
Volitional exaggeration of body size through fundamental and formant frequency modulation in humans.
Article in Scientific reports, 2016. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 23 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
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Who cites it
23 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it, 54 citations in OpenAlex.
- Rethinking the frequency code: a meta-analytic review of the role of acoustic body size in communicative phenomena.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2021Pooled it
- Acoustic Reflections of Vocal Adjustments Elicited With a Standard Reading Passage: Effect of Voice Disorders.Journal of speech, language, and hearing research : JSLHR · 2025Article
- Rethinking Hominin Air Sac Loss in Light of Phylogenetically Meaningful Evidence.Evolutionary anthropology · 2025Article
- A practical guide to calculating vocal tract length and scale-invariant formant patterns.Behavior research methods · 2024Article
- Humans need auditory experience to produce typical volitional nonverbal vocalizations.Communications psychology · 2024Article
- Voice analytics in the wild: Validity and predictive accuracy of common audio-recording devices.Behavior research methods · 2024Article
- Sex-related communicative functions of voice spectral energy in human chorusing.Biology letters · 2023Article
- Sequence variants affecting voice pitch in humans.Science advances · 2023Article
- Individual differences in vocal size exaggeration.Scientific reports · 2022Article
- Vocal communication across cultures: theoretical and methodological issues.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2022Article
- Segmental and suprasegmental encoding of speaker confidence in Wuxi dialect vowels.Frontiers in psychology · 2022Article
- Static and dynamic formant scaling conveys body size and aggression.Royal Society open science · 2022Article
- Vocal modulation in human mating and competition.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2021Review
- Singers show enhanced performance and neural representation of vocal imitation.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2021Article
- Harsh is large: nonlinear vocal phenomena lower voice pitch and exaggerate body size.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2021Article
- Efficacy in deceptive vocal exaggeration of human body size.Nature communications · 2021Article
- Acoustic allometry and vocal learning in mammals.Biology letters · 2020Review
- Perceived Closeness and Autistic Traits Modulate Interpersonal Vocal Communication.Frontiers in psychiatry · 2020Article
- Corner vowels in males and females ages 4 to 20 years: Fundamental and F1-F4 formant frequencies.The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America · 2019Article
- Human roars communicate upper-body strength more effectively than do screams or aggressive and distressed speech.PloS one · 2019Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
7 authors at 4 institutions in 4 countries.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Several mammalian species scale their voice fundamental frequency (F0) and formant frequencies in competitive and mating contexts, reducing vocal tract and laryngeal allometry thereby exaggerating apparent body size. Although humans' rare capacity to volitionally modulate these same frequencies is thought to subserve articulated speech, the potential function of voice frequency modulation in human nonverbal communication remains largely unexplored. Here, the voices of 167 men and women from Canada, Cuba, and Poland were recorded in a baseline condition and while volitionally imitating a physically small and large body size. Modulation of F0, formant spacing (∆F), and apparent vocal tract length (VTL) were measured using Praat. Our results indicate that men and women spontaneously and systemically increased VTL and decreased F0 to imitate a large body size, and reduced VTL and increased F0 to imitate small size. These voice modulations did not differ substantially across cultures, indicating potentially universal sound-size correspondences or anatomical and biomechanical constraints on voice modulation. In each culture, men generally modulated their voices (particularly formants) more than did women. This latter finding could help to explain sexual dimorphism in F0 and formants that is currently unaccounted for by sexual dimorphism in human vocal anatomy and body size.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.