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Fundamental frequency variations were examined in readings of the fourth and fifth sentences of the "Rainbow Passage" and in the sustained vowel /a/ produced by 20 young adults and 20 older adults. The Tektronix Visipitch provided the fundamental frequency contour (frequency variations in continuous reading) and Honeywell Visicorder determined frequency perturbation in the sustained vowel. Results showed that older speakers produced lower pitches, larger intonational ranges, and greater numbers of inflections in reading than did younger speakers. The maximum change in inflection produced by older adults was significantly greater than that of young adults. In addition, frequency perturbation found in the sustained vowel production of older speakers was significantly greater than that of younger speakers. Information concerning the perceived pitch characteristics of the voices was also obtained. Implications of these findings for the effects of aging on voice as well as diagnosis of laryngeal dysfunction were discussed.

A number of changes in older adults' speech characteristics accompany aging. This article reviews the changes usually perceived in elders' speech, then focuses on several key components of older adults' speech that account for these changes: vowel productions, voice onset time and phoneme segment duration, and speaking rate. Although laryngeal factors are evident in older voices and associated with declining physiological conditions, certain changes are associated with advanced age.

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Effects of gender on listeners' judgments of intelligibility were investigated. Subjects (15 women; 15 men) provided magnitude-estimation scaling responses and over-all impression of the intelligibility of a male and female speaker's comparable versions of audiotaped speech samples varying systematically in terms of the number of phonemes produced correctly. There was no significant difference between male and female subjects' magnitude-estimation scaling responses; however, their over-all impressions of the intelligibility of the speakers tended to differ. Women indicated that the male speaker was more understandable, and men indicated that the female speaker was more understandable. Magnitude-estimation scaling may provide an objective means for evaluating a speaker's intelligibility. It appears to transcend gender-biases associated with judgments of speech intelligibility.