Younger Talkers Research Articles

The use of disfluency cues in spoken language processing: Insights from aging.

Past research suggests listeners treat disfluencies as informative cues during spoken language processing. For example, studies have shown that child and younger adult listeners use filled pauses to rapidly anticipate discourse-new objects. The present study explores whether older adults show a similar pattern, or if this ability is reduced in light of age-related declines in language and cognitive abilities. The study also examines whether the processing of disfluencies differs depending on the talker's age. Stereotyped ideas about older adults' speech could lead listeners to treat disfluencies as uninformative, similar to the way in which listeners react to disfluencies produced by non-native speakers or individuals with a cognitive disorder. Experiment 1 used eye tracking to capture younger and older listeners' real-time reactions to filled pauses produced by younger and older talkers. On critical trials, participants followed fluent or disfluent instructions referring to either discourse-given or discourse-new objects. Younger and older listeners treated filled pauses produced by both younger and older talkers as cues for reference to discourse-new objects despite holding stereotypes regarding older adults' speech. Experiment 2 further explored listeners' biased judgments of talkers' fluency, using auditory materials from Experiment 1. Speech produced by an older talker was rated as more disfluent and slower than a younger talker even though these features were matched across recordings. Together, the findings demonstrate (a) older listeners' effective use of disfluency cues in real-time processing and (b) that listeners treat both older and younger talkers' disfluencies as informative despite biased perceptions regarding older talkers' speech. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).

The Potential Role of Talker Age in the Perception of Regional Accent.

The speech signal contains potential cues to a wide range of socioindexical variables. The aim of the current study was to investigate how one variable, talker age, might interact with the perception of a theoretically independent variable, regional accent. We investigated this question specifically in the case of Korean: although many studies have reported on phonetic differences among Korean dialects and speakers' beliefs and attitudes about them, there has been virtually no research on the auditory perception of such variation. Potential acoustic cues to regional accent were measured in read sentence productions from a total of 72 male talkers in their 20s or 50s to 60s from six Korean provinces. Then, in a perception experiment, native listeners from Seoul (n = 21), Gyeongsang (n = 10), and Jeolla (n = 10) listened to the sentences and were asked to identify the talker's regional origin from among 6 provinces. Listeners' responses correlated with talker age: young talkers were disproportionately perceived as being from Seoul, and old talkers-even life-long Seoul residents-were disproportionately perceived as being from non-Seoul regions. A follow-up experiment with listeners from Seoul (n = 30) in which talker age was treated as a between-subjects factor showed an attenuated effect, suggesting that the effect of talker age on perceived regional origin may be partially driven by a contrast effect, such that the speech of older talkers is perceived as less standard-and thus coming from a non-Seoul region-when being directly compared with that of younger talkers.

Toddlers' sensitivity to talker age in novel word learning: Children are better teachers

From early on, young children are sensitive to talker-specific attributes present in the speech signal. For example, infants attend selectively and learn better from their mother’s voice than another female voice. Since age influences vocal quality, we asked whether toddlers show similar selective attention and learning from talkers of specific ages. We recorded visual and auditory stimuli from 3 adult males and females and 3 boys and girls. In Experiment 1, 24 toddlers viewed two side-by-side video clips of two talkers reciting a nursery rhyme and heard a soundtrack that matched with either the age or gender of one of the two talkers. The results revealed that children were able to match both vocal age and gender attributes to visual attributes. In Experiment 2, 24 toddlers were tested in a novel word learning task with talkers of different ages and genders. The results revealed that toddlers learned novel words from child talkers but failed to learn from adult talkers. These results suggest that young learners are sensitive to talker age information in speech and are biased towards learning words from younger talkers. We discuss the origins of such a bias.From early on, young children are sensitive to talker-specific attributes present in the speech signal. For example, infants attend selectively and learn better from their mother’s voice than another female voice. Since age influences vocal quality, we asked whether toddlers show similar selective attention and learning from talkers of specific ages. We recorded visual and auditory stimuli from 3 adult males and females and 3 boys and girls. In Experiment 1, 24 toddlers viewed two side-by-side video clips of two talkers reciting a nursery rhyme and heard a soundtrack that matched with either the age or gender of one of the two talkers. The results revealed that children were able to match both vocal age and gender attributes to visual attributes. In Experiment 2, 24 toddlers were tested in a novel word learning task with talkers of different ages and genders. The results revealed that toddlers learned novel words from child talkers but failed to learn from adult talkers. These results suggest that young l...

Clear speech adaptations across the lifespan

Talkers need to be able to alter their speech production in order to communicate effectively in conditions in which there are acoustic or linguistic barriers to communication. The clear speaking styles that result from such adaptations have been well documented, but mostly for young adult talkers. As a skilled aspect of speech production, the ability to make such adaptations may develop late during acquisition and be affected by reduced motor or cognitive control in older talkers. In a series of studies, we are investigating how speech adaptations in challenging communicative conditions change across the lifespan: in children aged 9 to 15 years, in young adults, in older adults aged 65 and above. In all three studies, recordings were made while talker pairs complete a cooperative problem-solving task (diapix) when communication was easy or when a communication barrier was placed on one talker. Acoustic analyses have shown adaptations to speaking rate, intensity, fundamental frequency characteristics, vowel formant space. While young adults seem adept at making adaptations that are well suited to overcome the specific interference experienced by their interlocutors, younger talkers appear to make less nuanced adaptations. We will discuss factors affecting such speech adaptations across the lifespan.

Acoustic-phonetic characteristics of older children’s spontaneous speech in interactions in conversational and clear speaking styles

This study investigated (a) the acoustic-phonetic characteristics of spontaneous speech produced by talkers aged 9–14 years in an interactive (diapix) task with an interlocutor of the same age and gender (NB condition) and (b) the adaptations these talkers made to clarify their speech when speech intelligibility was artificially degraded for their interlocutor (VOC condition). Recordings were made for 96 child talkers (50 F, 46 M); the adult reference values came from the LUCID corpus recorded under the same conditions [Baker and Hazan, J. Acoustic. Soc. Am. 130, 2139–2152 (2011)]. Articulation rate, pause frequency, fundamental frequency, vowel area, and mean intensity (1–3 kHz range) were analyzed to establish whether they had reached adult-like values and whether young talkers showed similar clear speech strategies as adults in difficult communicative situations. In the NB condition, children (including the 13–14 year group) differed from adults in terms of their articulation rate, vowel area, median F0, and intensity. Child talkers made adaptations to their speech in the VOC condition, but adults and children differed in their use of F0 range, vowel hyperarticulation, and pause frequency as clear speech strategies. This suggests that further developments in speech production take place during later adolescence. [Work supported by ESRC.]

Quality of older voices processed by hearing aids: Acoustic factors explaining inter-talker differences

Hearing aid signal processing algorithms are often evaluated with professional recordings of voices. However, hearing aid users often listen to older talkers who may have poorer voices than younger talkers. The purpose of this study was to quantify the extent to which the acoustic and perceptual consequences of hearing aid digital signal processing algorithms differ for talkers that vary in their vocal characteristics. There were six older talkers (3 males and 3 females) selected from a larger database of 79 talkers; their voices had good, moderate, or poor quality based on perceptual data from younger and older listeners. The voices were presented in quiet and in the presence of babble noise (10 dB SNR). The voices were processed with varying amounts of frequency compression, wide dynamic range compression, and noise suppression (spectral subtraction). There were interactions between signal processing and voice characteristics as measured using the Hearing Aid Speech Quality Index (HASQI) and listener ra...

Perception of Talker Age by Young Adults with High-Functioning Autism

People with high-functioning Autism (HFA) can accurately identify social categories from speech, but they have more difficulty connecting linguistic variation in the speech signal to social stereotypes associated with those categories. In the current study, the perception and evaluation of talker age by young adults with HFA was examined. The participants with HFA performed similarly to a typically-developing comparison group in age classification and estimation tasks. Moreover, the participants with HFA were able to differentiate among talkers of different ages in a language attitudes task and rated older talkers as more intelligent than younger talkers. These results suggest that people with HFA are able to make reasonable social judgments about talkers based on their speech, at least for familiar social categories and personally relevant social attitudes.