Acoustic Analysis of Adult Speaker Age

Schötz, Susanne

doi:10.1007/978-3-540-74200-5_5

Cited by 77 publications

(74 citation statements)

References 63 publications

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“…It is commonly known that age-related changes in speech production mechanisms as well as in neuro-muscolar control determine considerable variation in speech production across the life span [1]. Stiffening of thorax, decreased lung capacity, and weakening of respiratory muscles are listed among the most typical changes in the respiratory system that have an impact on speech production.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Stiffening of thorax, decreased lung capacity, and weakening of respiratory muscles are listed among the most typical changes in the respiratory system that have an impact on speech production. Ossification and calcification of laryngeal cartilages, thickening of laryngeal epithelium as well as the atrophy of vocal folds are, instead, some of the most salient changes occurring in the laryngeal system [1]- [5]. Atrophy of facial, mastication and pharyngeal muscles, decreased lip strength and reduced accuracy of the lower lip and jaw when performing rapid movements, are the most representative changes undergone by the supra-laryngeal system [1]- [5].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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The Effect of Ageing on Speech Rhythm: A Study on Zurich German

Pellegrino

Dellwo

2018

Speech Prosody 2018

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Speech segmental and suprasegmental characteristics vary considerably across the life span, for example, due to degenerative changes in speech production mechanisms and neuro-muscolar control. A great deal of research on the acoustic correlates of adult speakers' voice has focussed on changes in voice quality, vowel formant patterns, f0, amplitude and speech rate. Only little attention has been paid on speech rhythm variability due to advancing age. Here we quantified between-language rhythmic variability in terms of the durational characteristics of consonantal and vocalic intervals (henceforth CV intervals). We compared the segmental durational variability of two groups of Zurich German speakers. Group 1: 16 young adults, aged from 18 to 32 years; group 2: 10 older adults, aged from 66 to 81 years. For both groups we analyzed 20 sentences in Zurich German from the TEVOID Corpus. Between-speaker durational variability across age was quantified through a variety of interval-based metrics: segment rate, %V, deltaC, deltaV, VarcoC, VarcoV, rPVI-C and nPVI-V. Results showed that rhythmic differences between younger and older adults are largely accountable for by speech rate differences. Segment rate, %V and raw measures of CV interval durational variability (deltaV, deltaC and r-PVI-C) showed effects between younger and older adults. Rate normalized metrics (VarcoC, VarcoV and n-PVI-V) did not differ significantly between the two age-groups. AbstractSpeech segmental and suprasegmental characteristics vary considerably across the life span, for example, due to degenerative changes in speech production mechanisms and neuro-muscolar control. A great deal of research on the acoustic correlates of adult speakers' voice has focussed on changes in voice quality, vowel formant patterns, f0, amplitude and speech rate. Only little attention has been paid on speech rhythm variability due to advancing age.Here we quantified age-related rhythmic variability in terms of the durational characteristics of consonantal and vocalic intervals (henceforth CV intervals). We compared the segmental durational variability of two groups of Zurich German speakers. Group 1: 16 young adults, aged from 18 to 32 years; group 2: 10 older adults, aged from 66 to 81 years. For both groups we analyzed 20 sentences in Zurich German from the TEVOID Corpus. Between-speaker durational variability across age was quantified through a variety of interval-based metrics: segment rate, %V, deltaC, deltaV, VarcoC, VarcoV, rPVI-C and nPVI-V.Results showed that rhythmic differences between younger and older adults are largely accountable for by speech rate differences. Segment rate, %V and raw measures of CV interval durational variability (deltaV, deltaC and r-PVI-C) showed effects between younger and older adults. Rate normalized metrics (VarcoC, VarcoV and n-PVI-V) did not differ significantly between the two age-groups.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Effect of Ageing on Speech Rhythm: A Study on Zurich German

Pellegrino

Dellwo

2018

Speech Prosody 2018

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“…For instance age, gender, dialect, fatigue and other pathological states, but also emotion have been investigated in speech (e.g. [31], [13], [35], [41]). However, the interaction of such speaker characteristics has not been addressed thoroughly.…”

Section: Phonetic Sciences Dealing With Speaker Characteristics / Biomentioning

confidence: 99%

Alcohol language corpus: the first public corpus of alcoholized German speech

Schiel

Barfüßer

2011

Lang Resources & Evaluation

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The Alcohol Language Corpus (ALC) is the first publicly available speech corpus comprising intoxicated and sober speech of 162 female and male German speakers. Recordings are done in the automotive environment to allow for the development of automatic alcohol detection and to ensure a consistent acoustic environment for the alcoholized and the sober recording. The recorded speech covers a variety of contents and speech styles. Breath and blood alcohol concentration measurements are provided for all speakers. A transcription according to SpeechDat/Verbmobil standards and disfluency tagging as well as an automatic phonetic segmentation are part of the corpus. An Emu version of ALC allows easy access to basic speech parameters as well as the us of R for statistical analysis of selected parts of ALC. ALC is available without restriction for scientific or commercial use at the Bavarian Archive for Speech Signals.

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“…Several studies have found that listeners can estimate the age of the speaker with varying degrees of success depending on the speech material, the characteristics of the speech sample and the task (for reviews see Linville, 2001;Schötz, 2007). Some studies have asked listeners to assign voices to discrete categories or age ranges (e.g., Ptacek and Sanders, 1966) while others have used direct magnitude estimation (e.g., Harnsberger et al, 2008).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Perception of speaker age in children's voices

Assmann¹,

Barreda²,

Nearey³

2013

Proceedings of Meetings on Acoustics

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To study the perception of speaker age in children's voices, adult listeners were presented with vowels in /hVd/ syllables, either in isolation or in a carrier sentence. Listeners used a graphical slider to register their estimate of the speaker's age. The data showed a moderate correlation of perceived age and chronological age. For isolated syllables, age estimation accuracy was fairly constant across age up to about age 11, but there was a systematic tendency for listeners to underestimate the ages of older girls. This error pattern was actually exaggerated when listeners were informed of the speaker's sex. Age estimation accuracy was higher for syllables embedded in a carrier sentence, and knowledge of the speaker's sex had little effect. Linear regression analyses were conducted using acoustic measurements of the stimuli to predict perceived age. These analyses indicated significant contributions of fundamental frequency, duration, vowel category, formant frequencies as well as certain measures related to the voicing source. The persistent underestimation of age for older girls, and the effect knowledge of speaker sex has on this underestimation suggest that acoustic information is combined with expectations regarding speakers of a given sex in arriving at an estimate of speaker age.

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Acoustic Analysis of Adult Speaker Age

Cited by 77 publications

References 63 publications

The Effect of Ageing on Speech Rhythm: A Study on Zurich German

The Effect of Ageing on Speech Rhythm: A Study on Zurich German

Alcohol language corpus: the first public corpus of alcoholized German speech

Perception of speaker age in children's voices

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