ABSTRACT
This chapter considers the question of whether the voices of preadolescent boys can be distinguished from those of preadolescent girls and examines some of the evidence surrounding this issue.
The chapter is arranged in two sections. The first reviews some experimental evidence concerning listener identification of child gender from voices, certain acoustic characteristics of boys' and girls' voices and the possibility of anatomical differences in their vocal structures. The second section describes a study recently undertaken by one of the authors (Lee), in a UK context, to assess whether a perceptual difference exists between boys' and girls' voices and, if so, its possible basis in speech production.
