SpeakingF₀characteristics of elderly Euro-American and African-American speakers: building a clinical comparative platform

Abstract

This study sought to describe speaking fundamental frequency characteristics of elderly Euro-American and African-American individuals and to explore the eOE ects of ethnicity and ageing on vocal parameters of speech production. Speech samples from 42 elderly Euro-American and 37 elderly African-American individuals (age range: 70± 80 years) were compared on measures of mean speaking fundamental frequency (F 0 ), maximum and minimum speaking F 0 , speaking F 0 standard deviation (F 0 SD), and speaking F 0 range (in semitones). Elderly African-American females had signi® cantly lower mean speaking F 0 and speaking F 0 SD than their Euro-American cohorts. Results indicate that researchers need to improve the clinical database for speakers from non-Euro-American backgrounds, and speech± language pathologists must exercise discretion when assessing the speaking F 0 and other speech characteristics of elderly individuals from diOE erent ethnic groups.

A spontán beszéd a nem és az életkor függvényében gyermek- és fiatal felnőttkorban

“…A tanult genderspecifikus viselkedésmintákat, illetve szociális/szociokulturális faktorokat (Fitch-Holbrook 1970, Wheat-Hudson 1988, utóbbiakhoz kapcsolódóan a gége leszorításával elért mélyebb alaphangot a fiatal fiúknál (Huszár 2009). Továbbá az artikuláció pontosságát (Diehl et al 1996), illetve a testalkatot (Collins 2000) és a toldalékcső paramétereit (Xue et al 2001), amelyek szintén befolyásolhatják a beszédet.…”

Comparison of Fundamental Frequency between Monolingual and Bilingual Children with a Cochlear Implant

“…F0 is affected by several factors such as anthropomorphic differences of phonatory system, ethnicity, gender, age and emotional state of speakers [24][25][26]. In addition to the physical or other functional factors, socio-cultural factors such as bilingualism may also influence pitch characteristics (F0) of sounds [27]. Altenberg and Ferrand [28] reported that the English/Russian bilinguals consistently had a higher mean F0 than the age and gender-matched peers of a monolingual Russian or English.…”