The Effect of Age on Formant Frequencies of Malay Children between 7-12

The purpose of this study was investigate the first four formant frequencies of sustained vowels in normal Malaysian Malay children to find out the effect of age and gender on them. Thus there were several studies about formant frequencies which have been done for adults so far, but still look into the formant frequencies of Malay vowels produced by Malay children have not been well-established. The need to investigate on the effect of age and gender on formant frequency values on children is also obvious. The 360 normal Malay children in 6 different age groups were asked to pronounce all 6 Malay vowels in 5 seconds. The first four formant frequencies of all 6 Malay sustained vowels were extracted for each children in all age groups and the regression line, Mean and Standard Deviation of them were calculated. The results showed that generally Malay children females had higher formant frequency than their male counterparts. The trend reduced during the age growing up. The results also showed that F1 and F3 decreased clearer and more remarkable than F2 and F4 by rising the age.