Speech aging: Production and perception

Tucker, Benjamin V.; Ford, C. Lawrence; Hedges, Stephanie

doi:10.1002/wcs.1557

Cited by 11 publications

(8 citation statements)

References 128 publications

(172 reference statements)

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“…The findings regarding changes in sustained phonation reported in the review by Rojas et al (2020) are confirmed by Tucker et al (2021). In addition, Tucker et al's overview of the literature also includes data on other kinds of speech production.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 67%

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

Karlsson

Hartelius

2021

Languages

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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.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 67%

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

Karlsson

Hartelius

2021

Languages

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“…One reason for the lack of a correlation between silent reading rate and articulation rate is that articulation and talking become slower when people grow older, whereas silent reading rate stays the same (at least up to the age of 60). Slower speech rate in older participants has been reported before (Tucker et al, 2021), as is the constant silent reading rate in adulthood up to the age of 60 (Aberson & Bouwhuis, 1997;Rodríguez-Aranda, 2003;Warrington et al, 2018). This means that testing participants systematically differing in age may be the ideal way to further investigate under which conditions articulation is absent from silent reading.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 95%

No correlation between articulation speed and silent reading rate when adults read short texts

Brysbaert¹,

Vantieghem

2022

Preprint

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Silent reading often involves phonological encoding of the text in addition to orthographic processing. A question related to the phonological code concerns its richness: Is it an abstract code or does it contain information about the pronunciation of the visual stimulus? To answer this question, we investigated the relationship between articulation speed and reading speed, both for silent reading and reading aloud. We investigated whether people with fast articulation speed read faster than people with slow articulation speed. We recruited 94 participants, who in a Zoom session were asked to read short texts silently or aloud. They were also asked to talk about their lives and say the numbers 1-10 or the months of the year as quickly as possible. Finally, they completed an online vocabulary test and an author recognition test. Multiple regression analysis and cluster analysis showed that although the speed of reading aloud and silent reading correlated to some extent, they belonged to two different clusters. Reading aloud was mainly related to talking fluency and articulation speed, while silent reading was more related to vocabulary and knowledge of fiction authors. These findings are consistent with the hypothesis that the phonological code in silent reading typically does not contain articulatory information, although our data do not rule out the possibility that this may be the case for a small percentage of people or when people read more difficult texts.

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“…Consequently, ageing people gradually lose their ability to predict word meaning from the contextual cues (Wlotko et al, 2010). In general, context is a burden for older adults: word comprehension problems are more pronounced in noisy contexts (Tucker et al, 2021), and resolution of lexical ambiguity becomes more costly as the context becomes more semantically impoverished (Lee & Federmeier, 2011). Interestingly, idiomatic expressions, such as proverbs, can be interpreted literally because of higher executive demands (Uekermann et al, 2008).…”

Section: Language and Cognitive Changes In Healthy Ageingmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Yet, even in the notable cases of prolonged language preservation in ageing (see Cohen et al, 2019; Pistono et al, 2021), ageing language appears to involve a greater degree of variability in cognitive functions comparing to younger speakers (Harada et al, 2013; Leal & Yassa, 2019). Among other things, ageing brings about changes in speech that primarily stem from ongoing changes in motor execution (Tremblay et al, 2018) as well as from anatomical shifts that impact voice quality, speed, and pitch (Tucker et al, 2021). As argued above, in this article we focus on those cognitive changes with a greater impact on language structure, particularly, if this impact is also supported by evidence from neurodegenerative conditions.…”

Section: Language and Cognitive Changes In Healthy Ageingmentioning

confidence: 99%

Revisiting the hypothesis of language retrogenesis from an evolutionary perspective.

Benítez‐Burraco¹,

Ivanova²

2023

Neuropsychology

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Objective: In this article, we reexamine the hypothesis of language retrogenesis, that is, the assumption that language change over healthy ageing mirrors, albeit inversely, language acquisition by the child. We additionally question whether this inverse pattern can as well be observed at the cognitive and neurobiological levels, and whether it can be informative (and a consequence, in fact) of how language evolved in humans. Method: We compare the language strengths and weaknesses signifying language acquisition and its eventual decay in healthy ageing. We further compare age-related cognitive and neurobiological readjustments during each of these two developmental stages, with a focus on brain areas involved in language processing. Finally, we delve into the evolutionary changes experienced by these areas. Results: We present evidence supporting the hypothesis of retrogenesis in two domains of language: the lexicon (lexical access, understanding of nonliteral meanings, and resolution of lexical competition) and syntax (understanding and production of complex sentences). Additionally, we show evidence that the brain areas supporting these complex tasks are late-myelinated in childhood and early-demyelinated during ageing. Finally, we show that some of these areas (such as the inferior frontal gyrus) are phylogenetically newer. Conclusions: Language acquisition in children and language degradation/loss in healthy ageing follow the principle of retrogenesis, but mostly in domains that are cognitively demanding and that depend on recently evolved brain devices. Putting this differently, the components of language that emerged more recently appear to be more, and earlier, affected during ageing, as well as developed later over childhood.

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Speech aging: Production and perception

Cited by 11 publications

References 128 publications

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

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

No correlation between articulation speed and silent reading rate when adults read short texts

Revisiting the hypothesis of language retrogenesis from an evolutionary perspective.

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