Acoustic Aspects of the Aging Voice

Movement sequencing in normal aging: speech, oro-facial, and finger movements

“…From group 1 to 4, a~55 % decline was observed for the simple sequences and~52 % decline for the complex sequences. Several prior studies have shown a decline in speech rate with age (Duchin and Mysak 1987;Fozo and Watson 1998;Ramig 1983a;Ryan 1972;Searl et al 2002;Wohlert and Smith 1998), but few studies have examined accuracy and only a few have shown that older adults are less intelligible than younger adults (Parnell and Amerman 1987;Shuey 1989). The present results demonstrate, for the first time, a decline in speech sequencing skills in healthy adults.…”

“…In addition to changes in F0 and jitter, voice loudness also changes (decrease) in aging (Baker et al 2001), affecting males more than females (Goy et al 2013). A decline in speech rate has also been reported for the repetition of words or sentences (Fozo and Watson 1998;Wohlert and Smith 1998) or directed speech (Duchin and Mysak 1987;Searl et al 2002), even when pauses between sentences were excluded from the calculation of speech rate, suggesting that the duration of speech sounds becomes longer with age (Ramig 1983a;Ryan 1972). This is indeed consistent with the results of a few studies that have shown an age-related increase in the duration of individual speech sounds and syllables during repetition of words or sentences (Morris and Brown 1987;Ryan and Burk 1974;Smith et al 1987).…”

Lingual kinematic strategies used to increase speech rate: Comparison between younger and older adults

“…Indeed, age-related changes in perceptual speech characteristics and acoustic measures have been reported in adults typically over 60 years, including the production of imprecise consonants and vowels (Ryan, & Burk, 1974;Parnell & Amerman, 1987;Shuey, 1989;Amerman, & Parnell, 1990), decreases in diadochokinetic (DDK), speech and reading rates Ptacek, Sander, Maloney & Jackson, 1966;Ryan, 1972;Ryan, & Burk, 1974;Ramig, 1983;Oyer, & Deal, 1985;Amerman, & Parnell, 1992;Flanagan, & Dembowski, 2002), and increased phoneme, syllable and sentence durations (Smith, Wasowicz, & Preston, 1987;Parnell, & Amerman, 1996). In a study conducted by Ryan and Burk (1974), imprecise consonants and a slow rate of articulation were found to be two of five speech characteristics that were strong predictors of perceived age.…”

Acoustic Analysis of Adult Speaker Age

“…Conversational speech SPL (also called intensity level) appears to remain stable or decrease slightly with increased CA, but has also been reported to increase for men after age 70, even for speakers without hearing loss [41,24,42,2,15]. The habitual SPL range in vowels is likely to increase with advancing female and male CA, and may be an important correlate of speaker age [43,15,36].…”