These tools will no longer be maintained as of December 31, 2024. Archived website can be found here. PubMed4Hh GitHub repository can be found here. Contact NLM Customer Service if you have questions.


Pubmed for Handhelds

PUBMED FOR HANDHELDS

Search MEDLINE/PubMed

  • Title: Noise and tremor in the perception of vocal aging in males.
    Author: Harnsberger JD, Brown WS, Shrivastav R, Rothman H.
    Journal: J Voice; 2010 Sep; 24(5):523-30. PubMed ID: 19815378.
    Abstract:
    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 (F(0))] 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 F(0) contour) and two levels of tremor (constant modulation of F(0) 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.
    [Abstract] [Full Text] [Related] [New Search]