T V T C F B T A: By: Waleed Mohammed Shareef Supervisor: Prof. Bushra Ni'ma Rashid

THE VOCAL TRACT CHANGES FROM BIRTH TO ADULTHOOD
By: Waleed Mohammed Shareef

Supervisor: Prof. Bushra Ni’ma Rashid
Introduction
When we vocalize, the vibration of the vocal folds becomes a primal sound source and
the shape of the vocal tract from the glottis to the lips determines the resonance of speech
sounds, which specifies vowels and consonants. A considerable number of studies have already
explored the anatomical and acoustic characteristics of adult vocal tracts, but only a few studies
have attempted this in relation to the developmental changes from infants to children to adults.
It is well known that an infant’s vocal tract is not simply a miniature version of an adult’s vocal
tract. Therefore, the developmental trajectory will not be uniform and each segment of the vocal
tract is expected to grow in a different manner and with different timing.
It is well known that the vocal tract of a newborn infant is rather closer to that of a
primate than that of an adult human being (Negus, 1949) as seen in the figure below:
The simplest difference between a child’s and an adult’s vocal tract is the length. The vocal
tract lengthens from about 8 cm in newborns to about 17 cm in adults. In addition, the bend in
the oropharyngeal channel is gradual at the beginning of life. The soft palate and the epiglottis,
which prevents food and drink from entering the airway during swallowing, are very close to
each other. During postnatal development, the hyoid bone and larynx descend gradually and the
bend in the oropharyngeal channel almost forms a right angle. As a result of the overall
postnatal development, the ratio of the vertical pharynx length versus the horizontal oral cavity
length changes from 1:2 at the beginning to approximately 1:1 in adulthood (Goldstein, 1980).
Scientists from the University of Wisconsin-Madison have conducted a series of studies

using a large-scale dataset, i.e. 605 MRI and CT images of individuals between birth and 19
years, to intensively explore vocal tract development. In their studies they found that there is a
non-uniform and non-linear growth pattern of the vocal tract and that the growth speed varies
depending on the phase of development. It was remarkable the rapidness in the first few years
of life so that the vocal tract lengthens about 2 cm during the first 2 years. The rapid descent of
the larynx and the hyoid bone has also been reported for the same time period (Lieberman,
2001).
The recent studies also revealed that the growth speed differs depending on the segments
of the vocal tract. For example, Vorperian (2009) and her colleagues compared the
developmental of nine variables. They found the variables in the oral region, which expand
along a horizontal plane and approximate mature adult size sooner than the variables in the
pharyngeal region, which expand along a vertical plane. The authors speculated that the
different growth schedule of the structures in the oral/horizontal versus pharyngeal/vertical
planes may reflect their diverse embryologic origins. Specifically, the embryologic structure
type for the horizontal oral cavity is ectodermally (inside layer) derived, whereas the vertical
pharynx region is endodermally (outside layer) derived.
There are other changes that happen during the first years of childhood. For example, the
hard palate reaches 80% of its mature adult length by the age of 18 months, and the pharynx,
reaches 80% of its adult length by about the age of 6 years. The descent of the laryngeal and
hyoid bone reached only 65% of the adult level at age 6 and continued descending considerably
after that until they reached the mature adult position.
Other anatomical observation of vocal tract development using MRI has also been
reported (Fitch & Giedd, 1999). For example, the elongation of the lip, tongue blade, tongue
dorsum, velum and pharynx occur in the prepubertal (2.8–8.1 yrs), pubertal (10.3–14.5 yrs), and
postpubertal (14.7–17 yrs) periods from 2 to 25 years old. Also only the velum and pharynx
became larger during the pubertal and postpubertal periods. This fact coincides with the claim
that the structures of the vocal tract grow disproportionately rather than uniformly (Vorperian,
2005). In addition, there is a disproportionate increase in the pharyngeal length in both
transitions. In comparing the growth rate of each structure, it was reported that lip, tongue
blade, tongue dorsum, and velum segments increase in size by an average of 12% between
childhood and puberty, and only 5% between puberty and adulthood, whereas the pharynx
length increases by 22% and 25%, respectively. Since this rapid elongation of the pharynx in
the pubertal period is most pronounced in males, (Fitch and Giedd, 1999) pointed out that there
are two phases during which large descents of the larynx take place: the first large descent
occurs early in life, and continues gradually in accordance with the growth of the body, and a
second large descent, which is restricted to males, occurs at puberty.
The pubertal descent of the larynx enlarges the vocal tract, especially the pharynx, of
males. As a result, the formant frequencies of males after puberty become lower than those of
females. The low formant frequencies as well as the low fundamental frequency (F0) caused by
longer vocal folds in males clearly distinguish the male voice from the female voice. However,
it is well known that gender specific differences in acoustic features actually exist well before
puberty during which there is a second rapid descent of the larynx. Since there were no known
anatomical differences between prepubertal boys and girls, the gender difference in the acoustic
features in early stage of life was attributed to behavioral rather than anatomical factors. For
example, boys may achieve a lower formant frequency by protruding their lips. By doing so,
they can behaviorally imitate the long vocal tract that characterizes adult males.
Conclusion
The anatomical development of the vocal tract can be summarized as follows, (1) the
growth pattern and speed differ depending on each segment of the vocal tract, and horizontal
segments mature faster than vertical segments, (2) a rapid larynx descent occurs twice during
the course of development, and the latter pubertal descent occurs specifically in males, and (3)
gender dimorphism can be observed in the horizontal segments of the vocal tract anatomy
within a few years of birth. In addition, the growth patterns of males and females also differ for
several segments.
References
 D. E. Lieberman, R. C. McCarthy, K. M. Hiiemae and J. B. Palmer, Ontogeny of postnatal

hyoid and larynx descent in humans, Arch. Oral Biol., 46, 117–128 (2001).
 V. E. Negus, The Comparative Anatomy and Physiology of the Larynx (Hafner, New York,
1949).
 U. G. Goldstein,. An articulatory model for the vocal tract of growing children, Doctor of
Science thesis. MIT, Cambridge, Mass. (1980).
 L. R. Gentry and V. S. Yandell, Development of vocal tract length during early childhood:
A magnetic resonance imaging study, J. Acoust. Soc. Am., 117, 338–350 (2005).
 H. K. Vorperian, S. Wang, M. K. Chung, E. M. Schimek, R. B. Durtschi, R. D. Kent, A. J.
Ziegert and L. R. Gentry, Anatomic development of the oral and pharyngeal portions of the
vocal tract: An imaging study, J. Acoust. Soc. Am., 125, 1666–1678 (2009).
 S. Bennet, Vowel formant frequency characteristics of preadolescent males and females, J.
Acoust. Soc. Am., 67, 231–238 (1981).
 J. Sachs, P. Lieberman and D. Erickson, Anatomical and cultural determinants of male and
female speech, in Language Attitudes: Current Trends and Prospects, R. W. Shuy and R. W.
Fasold, Eds. (Georgetown University Press, Washington, DC, 1973), pp. 74–84.
 T. L. Perry, R. N. Ohde and D. H. Ashmead, The acoustic bases for gender identification
from children’s voices, J. Acoust. Soc. Am., 109, 2988–2998 (2001).

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THE VOCAL TRACT CHANGES FROM BIRTH TO ADULTHOOD

By: Waleed Mohammed Shareef

Scientists from the University of Wisconsin-Madison have conducted a series of studies

 D. E. Lieberman, R. C. McCarthy, K. M. Hiiemae and J. B. Palmer, Ontogeny of postnatal

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