2023 Volume 44 Issue 1 Pages 86-89
Purpose: Puberty is the period of physical change from a child’s body to an adult’s body, during which male and female hormones are secreted. The appearance of secondary sex characteristics and rapid physical changes occur. The voice change is one of the secondary sex characteristics, voice changes so called voice mutation, which investigated perceptively were 12 years in boys and earlier in girls.
In this study, we regarded voice change as physical changes, and considered it as change from the lengths of the vocal folds in children to that of adults.
Methods: We calculated the lengths of the vocal folds in children, which increases with age [0.84×age (years)+4.02 mm], and the average lengths of the vocal fold in adults, 14.8 mm for males and 12.7 mm for females.
Results: The calculated period at the voice change was 12.83 years for males and 10.33 years for females, which occurred earlier in females than males.
Conclusion: The calculated boys’ age was very similar to the age at peak growth rate (12.89 years), and the girls’ age was similar to the age at pubertal onset (10.1 years) in Ogi growth study. These ages estimated from the lengths of the vocal folds of children and adults were considered to correspond to the present age of voice change in Japanese people.
