A Preliminary Investigation of the Effects of Gender and Race on Voice Onset Time

Abstract

Twenty individuals participated in a study of Voice Onset Time (VOT) production. Participants included equal numbers of males and females and equal numbers of African Americans and Caucasian Americans. Each individual read a set of stimuli formed from the six stop consonants (/p/, /t/, /k/; /b/, /d/, /g/) combined with the three vowels /i/, /α/, and /u/. Their productions were measured for VOT. Considerably more prevoicing (i.e., negative VOT) for voiced stops was found in the present study in comparison with past studies. Statistically significant differences were found for both gender and race. These results suggest that the normative data presently available is probably inadequate because it does not accurately reflect the normal distribution of either gender or race within the American population.