Vowels In Speech Can Help Distinguish Between Gay, Heterosexuals

A new study has suggested that the vowel sounds in an unfamiliar voice help identify a speaker's sexual orientation.

"This is a phenomenon that occurs every day," said study leader Erik C. Tracy, a cognitive psychologist at Ohio State University.

Genetics of 'Gay' Abandon
Homoesexuality (or) Same Sex Love is the hottest most discussed human trait. There has been a hunt for a Gaye gene in order to lend credibility to a growing cause.

"We are constantly speaking with people we don't know on our phones, and just from this conversation, we might be able to identify personal characteristics about that person, such as their gender, age, race, or sexual orientation," added Tracy.

To know what exactly while hearing that speech make us take these decisions, he decided to focus on sexual orientation, which-previous studies had shown-can be correctly ascertained by listeners hearing only one monosyllabic word.

In a series of experiments, Tracy and colleague Nicholas P. Satariano had seven gay and seven heterosexual males record a list of monosyllabic words, such as "mass," "food," and "sell".

Differently Wired and Gay - Are They Children of a Lesser God?
Marriages (read heterosexual) are made in heaven, they say. But what about homosexual partnerships? Are they made for each other?

Listeners were then asked to identify the sexual orientation of the speakers when played those entire words, the first two letter sounds (say, "ma"), or just the first letter sound ("m"). Although they couldn't accurately guess the sexual orientation of the speaker with just the first letter sound, "when presented with the first two letter sounds, listeners were 75 percent accurate," said Tracy.

"We believe that listeners are using the acoustic information contained in vowels to make this sexual orientation decision," he said.

Words And Their Worthiness
When Michael Jackson blew a kiss into the crowd and shouted ‘Love You’, the crowd went into raptures. Read on to find out the positive vibration of words…..

So while listeners are not very good at making a determination when they hear just the first consonant of a word (the "m"), when they hear the first consonant and the subsequent vowel ("ma"), "their accuracy levels increase dramatically," he added.

"I'm not sure what exactly the listeners are responding to in the vowel," said Tracy.

Women's Voices Do Not Change During Menstrual Cycle
A new study has stated that women's voices remain steady throughout their menstrual cycle and the hormonal changes do not make any difference to the voice quality.

"Other researchers have done various acoustic analyses to understand why gay and heterosexual men produce vowels differently. Whatever this difference is, it seems that listeners are using it to make this sexual orientation decision," added Tracy.

The study will be presented at this month's Acoustical Society of America meeting in Seattle on Monday.

Source-ANI