Temporal effects of vowel production on listeners' perception of speaker age

Twenty-four speakers prolonged the vowels /a e i o u/ and read the passage “My Grandfather.” The speakers were divided into four groups of six (three males, three females) based on chronological age, 41–50 years, 51–60 years, 61–70 years, and 71 years and over. Naive listeners provided perceptual judgements of each speaker's age based on the first two sentences from “My Grandfather.” The speakers' vowel productions were measured to determine time required to initiate and terminate each vowel. These ten measures plus time to articulate the four syllables /ma ɪ grændfaðɚ/ and speaker sex were regressed against speaker chronological and perceived ages. The best significant model for chronological age yielded an R-Square of only 0.428; while for the best significant model for perceived age R-Square was 0.647. Results indicate that speaker temporal control of speech exerts a strong influence on listener perception of speaker age, but has a relatively weaker relationship with speaker's chronological age. These findings suggest that temporal aspects of speech are critical in estimation of speaker age.