THE SPEECH RATE OF PEOPLE AT AN ADVANCED OLD AGE

The aim of the article was to evaluate the rate of speech of people at an advanced old age and without any demential illnesses when compared to the control group of 9-years-old children without any developmental disorders. Because of the fact that the control group consisted of children, we have also made references to the notion of elderspeak – a phenomenon similar to the baby-talk – but related to the way younger people talk to senior citizens. We tested the rate of speech in 32 subjects: the experimental group comprising 16 healthy people of an advanced old age without any neurodevelopmental illnesses (the average age: 83.1) and the control group, which included 16 children without any developmental disorders (the average age: 9.0) in order to achieve a correlation in terms of the male/female ratio for the comparative analysis. The analysed parameters included: the speaking rate, the articulation rate, the numer of pauses, and the ratio of pauses within the speech samples. The estimative quantitative analysis showed insignificant differences in the parameters that influence the rate of speech in both groups. The statistical analysis also showed that there were no significant differences in the main research parameters – the speaking rate, the articulation rate, the number of pauses, and the ratio of pauses. The research hypotheses regarding the differences in the speech rate of those at an advanced old age and of the children at the age of 9 were negated by the results of the ana lyses. It has been proven that the rate of speech of the elderly who age physiologically does not differ from the rate of speech production by the children.