Summary
Objective/Hypothesis
To specify a set of acoustic cues for vocal aging and to establish their perceptual
relevance.
Study Design
Perceptual testing.
Methods
To identify the acoustic and perceptual correlates of the aging voice, voice quality
[in conjunction with speaking rate and fundamental frequency (F0)] was systematically manipulated using resynthesis to determine its effect on perceived
age. Ten young male voices were resynthesized using two levels of noise (random modulation
of F0 contour) and two levels of tremor (constant modulation of F0 contour with a low-amplitude wave) under a speaking-rate manipulation (an increase
in speaking rate that is common to older male voices). These materials were submitted
to 40 naive listeners in an age-estimation task. Two sets of comparison materials
were also included for evaluation: unmanipulated samples from a 150 voice database
of young, middle-aged, and older voices and disordered voice samples representing
natural manifestations of the voice qualities of interest.
Results
Speaking rate, highest degree of tremor, and highest degree of noise all shifted,
in an additive manner, the mean perceived age of the young male voices by a maximum
of 12 years on average; individual voices were observed being shifted by a generation.
Fundamental frequency manipulations had no significant effect on perceived age.
Conclusions
Voice quality (both tremor and noise) and speaking rate are all perceptually relevant
cues of age in male voices.
Key Words
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Article info
Publication history
Published online: October 08, 2009
Accepted:
January 22,
2009
Identification
Copyright
© 2010 The Voice Foundation. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
