Acoustic Analysis of Adult Speaker Age

This chapter offers an introduction to the phonetic study of speaker age, with focus on what is known about the acoustic features which vary with age.

Abstract

nformation about the age of the speaker is always present in speech. It is used as perceptual cues to age by human listeners, and can be measured acoustically and used by automatic age estimators. This chapter offers an introduction to the phonetic study of speaker age, with focus on what is known about the acoustic features which vary with age. The age-related acoustic variation in temporal as well as in laryngeally and supralaryngeally conditioned aspects of speech has been well documented. For example, features related to speech rate, sound pressure level (SPL) and fundamental frequency (F0) have been studied extensively, and appear to be important correlates of speaker age. However, the relationships among the correlates appear to be rather complex, and are influenced by several factors. For instance, differences have been reported between correlates of female and male age, between speakers of good and poor physiological condition, between chronological age and perceived age, and also between different speech sample types (e.g. sustained vowels, read or spontaneous speech). More research is thus needed in order to build reliable automatic classifiers of speaker age.