Perceptual and acoustic correlates of aging in the speech of males

Ryan, William J.; Burk, Kenneth W.

doi:10.1016/0021-9924(74)90030-6

Cited by 156 publications

(100 citation statements)

References 6 publications

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“…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). There is also limited evidence that aging affects speech intelligibility, that is, the capacity to produce speech sounds that can be recognized (Shuey 1989).…”

Section: Introductionsupporting

confidence: 81%

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

Bilodeau-Mercure

Kirouac

Langlois

et al. 2015

AGE

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The manner and extent to which normal aging affects the ability to speak are not fully understood. While age-related changes in voice fundamental frequency and intensity have been documented, changes affecting the planning and articulation of speech are less well understood. In the present study, 76 healthy, cognitively normal participants aged between 18 and 93 years old were asked to produce auditorily and visually triggered sequences of finely controlled movements (speech, oro-facial, and manual movement). These sequences of movements were either (1) simple, in which at least two of the three movements were the same, or (2) complex, in which three different movements were produced. For each of the resulting experimental condition, accuracy was calculated. The results show that, for speech and oro-facial movements, accuracy declined as a function of age and complexity. For these movements, the negative effect of complexity on performance accuracy increased with age. No aging or complexity effects were found for the manual movements on accuracy, but a significant slowing of movement was found, particularly for the complex sequences. These results demonstrate that there is a significant deterioration of fine motor control in normal aging across different response modalities.

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Section: Introductionsupporting

confidence: 81%

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

Bilodeau-Mercure

Kirouac

Langlois

et al. 2015

AGE

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Section: Accepted To Journal Of Speech Language and Hearing Research (mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…A number of studies have observed the ability of listeners to distinguish between young and older speakers based on auditory perception alone (e.g., Ryan & Burk, 1974;Shipp & Hollien, 1969). The characteristic "older voice" is thought to result from a complex interaction of sensorimotor changes that accompany aging -for example, speech motor changes (Liss, Weismer, & Rosenbek, 1990;Ryan & Burk, 1974) and declines in auditory feedback (Liss, et al, 1990) -and cognitive-linguistic factors such as slowed cognitive processing. As with age-related changes to other systems, there is much individual variation with regards to the rate and extent of the effect (Mueller, 1997 Laures- Gore, 2006;Torre & Barlow, 2009), and the overall physical condition of the individual also plays a role in the speech changes observed (Ramig & Ringel, 1983).…”

Section: Accepted To Journal Of Speech Language and Hearing Research (mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…This generally matches with the perceptual impression of reduced consonant imprecision observed in older adults. Indeed, some authors have suggested that the speech of older healthy adults may exhibit mild characteristics of dysarthria, a speech motor disorder associated with neurologic impairment (Amerman & Parnell, 1990;Liss, et al, 1990;Ryan & Burk, 1974).…”

Section: Accepted To Journal Of Speech Language and Hearing Research (mentioning

confidence: 99%

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Effect of Speaker Age on Speech Recognition and Perceived Listening Effort in Older Adults With Hearing Loss

McAuliffe

Wilding

Rickard

et al. 2012

J Speech Lang Hear Res

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Purpose: Older adults exhibit difficulty understanding speech that has been experimentally degraded. Age-related changes to the speech mechanism lead to natural degradations in signal quality. We tested the hypothesis that older adults with hearing loss would exhibit declines in speech recognition when listening to the speech of older adults, compared with the speech of younger adults, and would report greater amounts of listening effort in this task.Methods: Nineteen individuals with age-related hearing loss completed speech recognition and listening effort scaling tasks. Both were conducted in quiet, when listening to high and low predictability phrases produced by younger and older speakers respectively.Results: No significant difference in speech recognition existed when stimuli were derived from younger or older speakers. However, perceived effort was significantly higher when listening to speech from older adults, as compared to younger adults. Conclusions:For older individuals with hearing loss, natural degradations in signal quality may require greater listening effort. However, they do not interfere with speech recognition -at least in quiet. Follow-up investigation of the effect of speaker age on speech recognition and listening effort under more challenging noise conditions appears warranted.

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“…There are several researches related to the age or the perceived age of normal speech. It has been reported that there is a correlation between the actual age and the perceived age [14]. As an investigation of an impact of aging on speech acoustics, it has been found that aperiodicity of excitation signals tends to increase with aging [15] and the perceived age of normal speech is varied by manipulating its F 0 variations, duration, and aperiodicity [16].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Voice Timbre Control Based on Perceived Age in Singing Voice Conversion

Kobayashi

Toda

Doi

et al. 2014

IEICE Trans. Inf. & Syst.

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SUMMARYThe perceived age of a singing voice is the age of the singer as perceived by the listener, and is one of the notable characteristics that determines perceptions of a song. In this paper, we describe an investigation of acoustic features that have an effect on the perceived age, and a novel voice timbre control technique based on the perceived age for singing voice conversion (SVC). Singers can sing expressively by controlling prosody and voice timbre, but the varieties of voices that singers can produce are limited by physical constraints. Previous work has attempted to overcome this limitation through the use of statistical voice conversion. This technique makes it possible to convert singing voice timbre of an arbitrary source singer into those of an arbitrary target singer. However, it is still difficult to intuitively control singing voice characteristics by manipulating parameters corresponding to specific physical traits, such as gender and age. In this paper, we first perform an investigation of the factors that play a part in the listener's perception of the singer's age at first. Then, we applied a multiple-regression Gaussian mixture models (MR-GMM) to SVC for the purpose of controlling voice timbre based on the perceived age and we propose SVC based on the modified MR-GMM for manipulating the perceived age while maintaining singer's individuality. The experimental results show that 1) the perceived age of singing voices corresponds relatively well to the actual age of the singer, 2) prosodic features have a larger effect on the perceived age than spectral features, 3) the individuality of a singer is influenced more heavily by segmental features than prosodic features 4) the proposed voice timbre control method makes it possible to change the singer's perceived age while not having an adverse effect on the perceived individuality. key words: singing voice, voice conversion, perceived age, spectral and prosodic features, subjective evaluations

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Perceptual and acoustic correlates of aging in the speech of males

Cited by 156 publications

References 6 publications

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

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

Effect of Speaker Age on Speech Recognition and Perceived Listening Effort in Older Adults With Hearing Loss

Voice Timbre Control Based on Perceived Age in Singing Voice Conversion

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