Voice loudness and gender effects on jitter and shimmer in healthy adults
Related Experiment Video
Updated: Jul 3, 2026

Foreign Accent and Forensic Speaker Identification in Voice Lineups: The Influence of Acoustic Features Based on Prosody
Published on: September 27, 2024
Meike Brockmann1, Claudio Storck, Paul N Carding
1Head of Speech Pathology Section, Clinic of Otorhinolaryngology, Head and Neck Surgery, University Hospital Zurich, Frauenklinikstrasse 24, 8091 Zürich, Switzerland. meike.brockmann@usz.ch
Purpose:
The aim of this study was to investigate voice loudness and gender effects on jitter and shimmer in healthy young adults because previous descriptions have been inconsistent.
Method:
Fifty-seven healthy adults (28 women, 29 men) aged 20-40 years were included in this cross-sectional single-cohort study. Three phonations of /a/ at soft, medium, and loud individual loudness were recorded and analyzed using PRAAT software (P. Boersma & D. Weeninkk, 2006). Voice loudness and gender effects on measured sound pressure level, fundamental frequency, jitter, and shimmer were assessed through the use of descriptive and inferential (analysis of variance) statistics.
Results:
Jitter and shimmer significantly increased with decreasing voice loudness, especially in phonations below 75 dB and 80 dB. In soft and medium phonation, men were generally louder and showed significantly less shimmer. However, men had higher jitter measures when phonating softly. Gender differences in jitter and shimmer at medium loudness may be mainly linked to different habitual voice loudness levels.
Conclusion:
This pragmatic study shows significant voice loudness and gender effects on perturbation. In clinical assessment, requesting phonations above 80 dB at comparable loudness between genders would enhance measurement reliability. However, voice loudness and gender effects in other age groups, in disordered voices, or when a minimal loudness is requested should be further investigated.
Related Concept Videos
Perceiving Loudness, Pitch, and Location
Place theory, or place coding, suggests that different pitches are heard because various sound waves activate specific locations along the cochlea's basilar membrane. The brain determines the pitch of a sound by identifying...
Auditory Perception
Sound Intensity
Buffer Effectiveness
The buffer capacity is the amount of acid or base that can be added to a given volume...
Sound Intensity Level
The human ear can perceive an extensive range of sound intensity, necessitating the use of the logarithmic scale to define a physical quantity—the intensity level. It is a ratio of two intensities and hence a...
Factors Affecting Perception
An illustrative example of a perceptual set is the scenario where an airline pilot told...

