Effects of age on speech and voice quality ratings.
The quality of communication may be affected by listeners' perception of talkers' characteristics. This study examined if there were effects of talker and listener age on the perception of speech and voice qualities. Younger and older listeners judged younger and older talkers' gender and age, then rated speech samples on pleasantness, naturalness, clarity, ease of understanding, loudness, and the talker's suitability to be an audiobook reader. For the same talkers, listeners also rated voice samples on pleasantness, roughness, and power. Younger and older talkers were perceived to be similar on most qualities except age. Younger and older listeners rated talkers similarly, except that younger listeners perceived younger voices to be more pleasant and less rough than older voices. For vowel samples, younger listeners were more accurate than older listeners at age estimation, while older listeners were more accurate than younger listeners at gender identification, suggesting that younger and older listeners differ in their evaluation of specific talker characteristics. Thus, the perception of quality was generally more affected by the age of the listener than the age of the talker, and age-related differences between listeners depended on whether voice or speech samples were used and the rating being made.
Department of Psychology, University of Toronto, 3359 Mississauga Road, Mississauga, Ontario L5L 1C6, Canada.
Huiwen
H
Goy
Department of Psychology, University of Toronto, 3359 Mississauga Road, Mississauga, Ontario L5L 1C6, Canada.
M
M
Kathleen Pichora-Fuller
Department of Speech-Language Pathology, University of Toronto, 500 University Avenue, Toronto, Ontario M5G 1V7, Canada.
Pascal
P
van Lieshout
D000161:Acoustic Stimulation; D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D000367:Age Factors; D000368:Aged; D000369:Aged, 80 and over; D000375:Aging / Q000523:psychology*; D001301:Audiometry, Pure-Tone; D001302:Audiometry, Speech; D032882:Comprehension; D003463:Cues; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007600:Judgment; D008144:Loudness Perception; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D015588:Observer Variation; D013061:Speech Acoustics; D013065:Speech Intelligibility; D013067:Speech Perception; D013997:Time Factors; D014833:Voice Quality; D055815:Young Adult