Listening preferences for voice types as a function of age

Abstract

This experiment was designed primarily to generate information about the preferences of older listeners for various classes of voices. Speech samples for that purpose were elicited from 80 speakers, who provided the desired stimuli (sentences) under frequency and intensity control. Specifically, there were eight cells in the design, each represented by 10 speakers (5 male and 5 female); all combinations of low, medium, and high speaker fundamental frequency (SFF) were combined with soft, middle and loud vocal intensity (VI) productions—except for the low-SFF/high-VI combination, which proved impossible to obtain. Listeners were four groups of 20 individuals equally divided as to sex. The two older of these groups, designated as the experimental subjects, were: older adults (60–70 years of age) and the elderly (80–90 years). The two younger groups served as controls; they included young adults (20–30 years of age) and middle-aged adults (aged 40–50 years). Listeners rated each speech sample on a 5-point preference scale varying from “like very much” to “dislike very much.” The results suggest that most listeners prefer medium intensity voices. Other preference tendencies were toward low-pitched voices and (slightly) toward male speakers; but these trends were not as marked as the first. Most importantly, there were no systematic differences in voice type preferences between or among the older and younger groups—or between male and female listeners.