Changes in formant frequencies associated with postural change in adult male speakers over 50 years old

Abstract

It is possible that changes of direction of gravity relative to the vocal tract associated with changes in posture influence acoustic characteristics of speech including vowel formant frequencies. Studies examining such effects had produced mixed results and demonstrated the possibility of substantive interspeaker variability in the effect of postural changes on vowel formant frequencies. Recent work by Takakura et al. [‘‘Changes in formant frequencies associated with postural change,’’ paper presented at the Fall meeting of Acoustical Society of Japan (2006)], using young adult male speakers, revealed a small number of speakers demonstrating changes in vowel formant frequencies and suggested effect of age. The present study attempts to examine changes of vowel formant frequencies in upright and supine position among older male speakers. Attempts will be made to eliminate the effect of differences in neck position between the postures through the use of a power-bead-based neck stabilizer. The results will be compared with data from young normal speakers in the previous study and inferences will be made relative to speech production models.