VOCAL PARAMETERS AS GENDER MARKERS IN TRANS WOMEN AND MEN

Objective: To relate gender perception with the acoustic and auditory-perceptual parameters of the voice of trans women and men, to identify the gender markers of this population.Methods: Observational, cross-sectional, descriptive study, approved by the Research Ethics Committee (n. 5,353,501). 31 trans women and 24 trans men participated, aged between 18 and 43 years old, classified by the Auditory Perceptual Judgment (APJ), based on the emissions of the sustained vowel /a/ and connected speech. The APJ was made in consensus by two judges; vocal quality was analyzed using the GRBASI scale; the parameters pitch (high, medium and low), loudness (strong, adequate and weak), resonance (laryngopharyngeal, balanced and nasal), articulation (locked, adequate and exaggerated), intonation (descending, level and exaggerated) and gender perception (feminine, masculine and neutral). In the acoustic evaluation, the PRAAT software was used to extract some parameters: fundamental frequency (FO), FO deviation, minimum and maximum frequency, first (F1), second (F2), third (F3) and fourth (F4) formants. For the statistical analysis of the data, the Kruskal Wallis test, chi-square test and Fisher’s exact test were used. In all statistical tests, a significance level of 5% (p < 0.05) was used.Results: The average of FO was 146.289Hz for trans women and 157.409Hz for trans men. For trans women, gender perception was related to the parameters: pitch (p=0.013), articulation (p=0.017) and intonation (p=0.000). In trans men, gender perception was related to hormone use (p=0.016), GRBASI tension parameter (p=0.028), pitch (p=0.001), loudness (p=0.033), intonation (p=0.001 ), average of Fo (p=0.034), minimum frequency (p=0.029), maximum frequency (p=0.018) and F1 (P=0.038). The other parameters did not present significant results. Conclusions: In trans women, adequate articulation and rising intonations were observed as markers of female gender, even with low or high pitch. In trans men, more tense vocal quality, descending intonations and an average of F0 in the range considered masculine were observed as markers of masculine gender. Its´s important to hightlight that high pitch and rising intonation were markers of feminine gender for both trans women and men.