Aging of speech production, from articulatory accuracy to motor timing.

Despite the huge importance of spoken language production in everyday life, little is known about the manner and extent to which the motor aspects of speech production evolve with advancing age, as well as the nature of the underlying senescence mechanisms. In this cross-sectional group study, we examined the relationship between age and speech production performance using a nonlexical speech production task in which spoken syllable frequency and phonological complexity were systematically varied to test hypotheses about underlying mechanisms. A nonprobabilistic sample of 60 cognitively healthy adults (18-83 years) produced meaningless nonwords aloud as quickly and accurately as possible.

The Moderating Effect of Frequent Singing on Voice Aging.

The effects of aging on voice production are well documented, including changes in loudness, pitch, and voice quality. However, one important and clinically relevant question that remains concerns the possibility that the aging of voice can be prevented or at least delayed through noninvasive methods. Indeed, discovering natural means to preserve the integrity of the human voice throughout aging could have a major impact on the quality of life of elderly adults.

Effects of age on the amplitude, frequency and perceived quality of voice.

The manner and extent to which voice amplitude and frequency control mechanisms change with age is not well understood. The related question of whether the assessment of one's own voice evolves with age, concomitant with the acoustical changes that the voice undergoes, also remains unanswered. In the present study, we characterized the aging of voice production mechanisms (amplitude, frequency), compared the aging voice in different experimental contexts (vowel utterance, connected speech) and examined the relationship between voice self-assessment and age-related voice acoustical changes.

Measuring tongue shapes and positions with ultrasound imaging: a validation experiment using an articulatory model.

Objective: The goal of this paper is to assess the validity of various metrics developed to characterize tongue shapes and positions collected through ultrasound imaging in experimental setups where the probe is not constrained relative to the subject's head.

Patients And Methods: Midsagittal contours were generated using an articulatory-acoustic model of the vocal tract. Sections of the tongue were extracted to simulate ultrasound imaging.

Articulatory and acoustic adaptation to palatal perturbation.

Previous work has established that speakers have difficulty making rapid compensatory adjustments in consonant production (especially in fricatives) for structural perturbations of the vocal tract induced by artificial palates with thicker-than-normal alveolar regions. The present study used electromagnetic articulography and simultaneous acoustic recordings to estimate tongue configurations during production of [s š t k] in the presence of a thin and a thick palate, before and after a practice period. Ten native speakers of English participated in the study.

Compensation strategies for a lip-tube perturbation of French [u]: an acoustic and perceptual study of 4-year-old children.

The relations between production and perception in 4-year-old children were examined in a study of compensation strategies for a lip-tube perturbation. Acoustic and perceptual analyses of the rounded vowel [u] produced by twelve 4-year-old French speakers were conducted under two conditions: normal and with a 15-mm-diam tube inserted between the lips. Recordings of isolated vowels were made in the normal condition before any perturbation (N1), immediately upon insertion of the tube and for the next 19 trials in this perturbed condition, with (P2) or without articulatory instructions (P1), and in the normal condition after the perturbed trials (N2).