Abstract
We present a multidimensional acoustic report describing variation in speech productions on data collected from 500 francophone adult speakers (20 to 93 y.o.a.) as a function of age. In this cross-sectional study, chronological age is considered as a continuous variable while oral productions, in reading and speech-like tasks, are characterized via 22 descriptors related to voice quality, pitch, vowel articulation and vocalic system organization, time-related measures and temporal organization, as well as maximal performances in speech-like tasks. In a first analysis, we detail how each descriptor varies according to the age of the speaker, for male and female speakers separately. In a second analysis, we explore how chronological age is, in turn, predicted by the combination of all descriptors. Overall, results confirm that with increasing age, speakers show more voice instability, sex-dependent pitch changes, slower speech and articulation rates, slower repetition rates and less complexity effects in maximal performance tasks. A notable finding of this study is that some of these changes are continuous throughout adulthood while other appear either at old age or in early adulthood. Chronological age appears only moderately indexed in speech, mainly through speech rate parameters. We discuss these results in relation with the notion of attrition and with other possible factors at play, in an attempt to better capture the multidimensional nature of the notion of “age”.
Highlights
IntroductionA better understanding of the evolution of speech throughout adulthood is critical for our general understanding of the complexity of variables affecting speech production, since age-related changes can originate from various sources (physiological, cognitive, social inter alia)
Independently of the research questions addressed here, the present study aims to provide valuable reference values related to typical variation in speech across sex and age in modern French based on a multidimensional acoustic dataset
We present the results of the first MARS analysis, showing how chronological age predicts each of the 22 speech descriptors separately
Summary
A better understanding of the evolution of speech throughout adulthood is critical for our general understanding of the complexity of variables affecting speech production, since age-related changes can originate from various sources (physiological, cognitive, social inter alia). It is crucial both for clinical research where data have to be age-standardized, and for any research on speech for which factors of variability across talkers and indexical properties associated with speaker identity need to be taken into account. Few longitudinal studies have been carried out, such as the seminal description of Harrington (2006) on Queen Elizabeth II’s speech over 30 years, or the ongoing work of Gerstenberg and colleagues (Gerstenberg et al 2018; Fuchs et al 2021)
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