On the Primary Influences of Age on Articulation and Phonation in Maximum Performance Tasks

Abstract

Maximum performance tasks have been identified as possible domains where incipient signs of neurological disease may be detected in simple speech and voice samples. However, it is likely that these will simultaneously be influenced by the age and sex of the speaker. In this study, a comprehensive set of acoustic quantifications were collected from the literature and applied to productions of sustained [a] productions and Alternating Motion Rate diadochokinetic (DDK) syllable sequences made by 130 (62 women, 68 men) healthy speakers, aged 20–90 years. The participants were asked to produce as stable (sustained [a] and DDK) and fast (DDK) productions as possible. The full set of features were reduced to a functional subset that most efficiently modeled sex-specific differences between younger and older speakers using a cross-validation procedure. Twelve measures of [a] and 16 measures of DDK sequences were identified across men and women and investigated in terms of how they were altered with increasing age of speakers. Increased production instability is observed in both tasks, primarily above the age of 60 years. DDK sequences were slower in older speakers, but also altered in their syllable and segment level acoustic properties. Increasing age does not appear to affect phonation or articulation uniformly, and men and women are affected differently in most quantifications investigated.

A systematic review of the relationships amongst older adults’ cognitive and motor speech abilities

“…Parnell & Amerman, 1987;Ryan & Burk, 1974). Findings from acoustic analyses support perceptual changes to speech rate (Karlsson & Hartelius, 2021;Harnsberger et al, 2008;Searle et al, 2002). For example, measuring words produced per minute and syllables per second, Duchin and Mysak (1987) found that speech rate during conversational, sentence repetition, and oral reading tasks decreased across the adult lifespan.…”

A Longitudinal Study of Speech Acoustics in Older French Females: Analysis of the Filler Particle euh across Utterance Positions

“…In contrast, Decoster and Debruyne (1997) found a greater balance of energy at higher frequencies in older females compared to younger ones in measures comparing H1-H2 (the amplitudes of the first and second harmonics) and E1-45 (mean energy up to 1 kHz and between 4-5 kHz). Karlsson and Hartelius (2021) recently observed complex patterns of age-related change in multiple Mel Frequency Cepstral Coefficients and their variability for sustained /a/: Relative energy increased in some narrow frequency bands, decreased in others, and showed U-shaped patterns in still others. Patterns also differed for men and women.…”

“…Our acoustic analysis covers formants (F1, F2) and fundamental frequency (f0), which have been widely studied, and voice quality, which has been assessed less frequently (but see the recent work by Fougeron et al 2021;Karlsson and Hartelius 2021). All parameters can reflect physical effects of aging but may also be conditioned by prosody, specifically whether the filler occurs pre-pausally, post-pausally, or within a speech unit.…”

Abstracts of the 8th International Conference on Speech Motor Control Groningen, August 2022

“…Introduction Acoustic studies have shown, that effects of aging can impact the level of speech motor control including a slower speech tempo (Amerman & Parnell, 1992) and a reduced vowel space (Thies et al, 2022), especially with an increased instability of speech patterns above the age of 60 years (Karlsson & Hartelius, 2021;. Furthermore, a gradual, non-linear decrease in the degree of coarticulation has been reported for French with a plateau from the mid-50s to 70 years and an abrupt drop beyond 70 years .…”