Speaking Fo and cepstral periodicity analysis of conversational speech in a 105-year-old woman: variability of aging effects.

We investigated speaking fundamental frequency and periodicity of voicing during conversational speech in a 105-year-old woman. Analyses revealed higher mean speaking fundamental frequency compared to previously published data obtained from elderly women. In the absence of normative data, the results of cepstrum analyses performed on vowels produced during connected speech revealed less periodicity for the 105-year-old woman's voice than for a 35-year-old woman's voice. The main finding of this study indicates that previously reported group trends regarding aging effects on mean speaking fundamental frequency of the female voice cannot simply be attributed to all elderly individuals. These results stress the importance, for clinical and research purposes, of recognizing the existence of considerable intra- as well as intersubject variability in the effects of aging on the voice.

[1]  P. Mueller,et al.  Speaking fundamental frequency characteristics of centenarian females. , 1992, Clinical linguistics & phonetics.

[2]  Ronald W. Schafer,et al.  Digital Processing of Speech Signals , 1978 .

[3]  H. Hollien.  “Old voices”: What do we really know about them? , 1987 .

[4]  Y Horii,et al.  Age and changes in vocal jitter. , 1980, Journal of gerontology.

[5]  A Russell,et al.  Speaking fundamental frequency changes over time in women: a longitudinal study. , 1995, Journal of speech and hearing research.

[6]  E. Mysak.  Pitch and duration characteristics of older males. , 1959, Journal of speech and hearing research.

[7]  Harry Hollien,et al.  Speaking fundamental frequency characteristics of Australian women: then and now , 1982 .

[8]  M. Rastatter,et al.  Variability of Voice Fundamental Frequency in Elderly Female Speakers , 1986, Perceptual and motor skills.

[9]  R S McGowan,et al.  Acoustic measurements of men's and women's voices: a study of context effects and covariation. , 1990, Journal of speech and hearing research.

[10]  D. Bless,et al.  Vibratory characteristics of the vocal folds in young adult and geriatric women , 1989 .

[11]  H. Hollien,et al.  Speaking fundamental frequency and chronologic age in males. , 1972, Journal of speech and hearing research.

[12]  B J Benjamin,et al.  Frequency variability in the aged voice. , 1981, Journal of gerontology.

[13]  J. Hillenbrand,et al.  Acoustic correlates of breathy vocal quality. , 1994, Journal of speech and hearing research.

[14]  M. Stoicheff.  Speaking fundamental frequency characteristics of nonsmoking female adults. , 1981, Journal of speech and hearing research.

[15]  W. S. Brown,et al.  Age-related differences in speech variability among women. , 1994, Journal of communication disorders.

[16]  Y. Horii,et al.  Frequency characteristics of male and female speakers in the pulse register. , 1984, Journal of communication disorders.

[17]  G. Evison,et al.  THE PATTERN OF OSSIFICATION IN THE LARYNGEAL CARTILAGES: A RADIOLOGICAL STUDY. , 1965, The British journal of radiology.

[18]  A. Noll.  Short‐Time Spectrum and “Cepstrum” Techniques for Vocal‐Pitch Detection , 1964 .

[19]  N. Isshiki,et al.  Laryngoscopic and voice characteristics of aged persons. , 1980, Archives of otolaryngology.

[20]  H. Hollien,et al.  Vocal Pitch Characteristics of Aged Women , 1963 .

[21]  Speaking fundamental frequency characteristics of middle-aged females. , 1967, Folia phoniatrica.

[22]  L. Ramig,et al.  Effects of physiological aging on selected acoustic characteristics of voice. , 1983, Journal of speech and hearing research.

[23]  H. Hollien,et al.  On the nature of vocal fry. , 1966, Journal of speech and hearing research.

[24]  W. S. Brown,et al.  Phonational profiles of female professional singers and nonsingers. , 1993, Journal of voice : official journal of the Voice Foundation.

[25]  Maria Inês Pegoraro Krook,et al.  Speaking fundamental frequency characteristics of normal Swedish subjects obtained by glottal frequency analysis. , 1988, Folia phoniatrica.

[26]  Guus de Krom,et al.  A Cepstrum-Based Technique for Determining a Harmonics-to-Noise Ratio in Speech Signals , 1993 .

[27]  S. Linville,et al.  Acoustic-perceptual studies of aging voice in women* , 1987 .

[28]  Ronald J. Baken,et al.  Clinical measurement of speech and voice , 1987 .

[29]  M. Hirano,et al.  Ageing of the vibratory tissue of human vocal folds. , 1989, Acta oto-laryngologica.

[30]  A. Noll.  Cepstrum pitch determination. , 1967, The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America.

[31]  W. S. Brown,et al.  Vocal jitter in young adult and aged female voices , 1989 .

[32]  Wojtek J. Chodzko-Zajko,et al.  Vocal indices of biological age , 1987 .

[33]  B. Benjamin.  DIMENSIONS OF THE OLDER FEMALE VOICE , 1986 .

[34]  Harry Hollien,et al.  On vocal registers , 1974 .