Journal of Psycholinguistic Research, Vol. 11, No.

2, 1982

Phonological Performance in Gerontological

Speech
Barbaranne J. Benjamin ~

Accepted November 17, 1981

The older speaker's production of phonology is affected by physiological and anatomic

changes that occur with age. The differences in phonatory performance between a group of
20 young adults (aged 21 to 32) and 20 older adults (aged 68 to 82) were measured in the
articulatory rate dimension. Spectrographic measurement revealed that older adults pro-
duced significantly longer vowels, longer silent intervals of stop consonants, and shorter
voice onset time values than young adult speakers.

INTRODUCTION

The distinction between performance and competency originated over 50

years ago with deSaussaure's differentiation between langue and parole.
Research since then has established that performance variables such as
memory, distraction, shifts of attention, and random or characteristic
errors affect language production (Chomsky, 1965). It has also been sug-
gested that factors such as the active and passive mechanical properties of
the speech mechanism constrain the consistent movement of the mechan-
ism in relation to the underlying phonological unit (Abbs & Eilenberg,
1976). It therefore follows that performance variables directly affect the
production of the phonological component of language and may be iden-
tiffed by the acoustic properties of speech production.
Since the proportion of elderly persons in the population is steadily
increasing, it becomes increasingly important to understand the anatomic

1Special Education Department, Southwest Texas State University, San Marcos, Texas
78666.
159

0090-6905[82/0300-0159503.0010 G 1982 Plenum Publishing Corporation

160 Benjamin

and physiological changes that occur with age. Although the phonological
system of elderly persons is intact and linguistic competency is not im-
paired, neuromuscular involvement associated with aging may adversely
affect speech production. These performance differences are often over-
looked in psycholinguistic studies.
The purpose of the present study was to investigate the collective
influence of age-associated performance variables upon the aged
speaker's acoustic production of the phonological component of lan-
guage. Several acoustical dimensions of speech (voice onset time, length
of consonantal segments, duration of vowels) were studied to measure the
effect of age-associated performance variables upon speech production.
Physiological differences associated with aging may affect the per-
formance or articulatory realization of the phonological component.
Muscle changes such as tongue hypertrophy in edentulous patients
(Balogh & Lelkes, 1961; Silverman, 1972) and atrophy of mucosae and lip
tissue (Cohen & Gitman, 1959) were reported in old age. Tooth resorption
may alter jaw opening (Zemlin, 1968) and reduction in salivary secretion
(Silverman, 1972) accompanies advanced age. Neurological changes also
occur. Both a reduction in the number of functioning neural cells and an
increase in random neural activity (Welford, 1965) may affect the rate of
articulatory movement.
These physiological and anatomical changes due to aging may result
in variations of performance. For instance, a slow rate and/or imprecise
articulation is perceived in older voices (Hartman & Danhauer, 1976;
Kukol, 1979; Ptacek & Sander, 1966; Ryan & Burk, 1974). In addition, a
reduction in reading and/or speaking rates, measured by number of sylla-
bles or words produced in a given time interval, has been documented
(Mysak, 1959; Mysak & Hanley, 1958; Pierce, 1977; Ryan, 1972; Shipp &
Hollien, 1969). Ptacek, Sander, Maloney, and Jackson (1966) found a
reduction in diadochokinetic rate for geriatric subjects compared to young
adults. Although older speakers produced slower speech rates than young
adults, the rate of articulatory production in geriatric speech has not been
studied.
Although articulatory imprecision has been perceived as a charac-
teristic of gerontological speech (Hartman & Danhauer, 1976; Ryan &
Burk, 1974), there has been no physical confirmation of this perceptual
judgment. Increased duration of vowels and reduction of vowels toward
the schwa may indicate imprecision in the motor movements of speech.
Changes in consonantal segment duration may indicate slowness in motor
movements. The resulting temporal distortions of the consonantal seg-
ments may be perceived as imprecision of articulation, or the phonemic
identity of the consonant may be affected.
Phonological Performance 161

Since phonemes are not individually produced but overlap in both the
articulatory and acoustic dimensions, Fant (1962) suggested that the
acoustic segments provide a viable segmentation of the acoustic signal
rather than an arbitrary measurement of phoneme duration. The physical
measures of segment duration and formant ratio can be used to assess
articulatory rate and vowel precision differences between young adult
speakers and nonpathological geriatric adults. In this study, articulatory
rate was measured by the average duration of vowels in stressed and
unstressed contexts, the mean length of the burst and silent intervals of
stop consonants, and the average voice onset times of voiced and un-
voiced stop consonants. Vowel precision, a measure of variation in vowel
production, was defined by the average ratio of the first and second
formants. These variations in phonological production, articulatory rate,
and vowel precision highlight performance differences between young
and older speakers.

METHOD

Subjects and Procedure

"Fen males and 10 females aged 21 to 32 years, with an average age of

29.4 years, and l0 males and l0 females aged 68 to 82 years, with a mean
age of 74.0 years, served as subjects. Each participant was a nonsmoker
who exhibited a hearing level normal for his/her age (Lebo & Reddell,
1972). In addition, no participant was taking medication known to affect
speech production nor had any subject ever received speech therapy.
Each participant's voice was recorded on an Ampex tape recorder
Model AG 500-2 in an isolated test suite. A 802 Ampex microphone was
positioned for 15-cm mouth-to-microphone distance. Five sentences con-
taining stop consonants were read in normal conversational voice. In
addition, one sentence ( " H e has a blue ball") was read four times with
sentence stress placed on a different word during each reading to alter
meaning.
The taped acoustical signal was applied to a Spectrograph Model
7092-A to produce wide-band spectrograms (80-8,000 Hz) of continuous
speech. Vowel formant frequencies and duration of stop consonant seg-
ments and vowels were measured from the spectrograms.
Voice onset time (VOT) was measured in both voiced and unvoiced
stop consonants. Negative VOT values were associated with voice initia-
tion preceding the burst segment, while positive VOT values were related
to glottal pulses following the burst. The burst segment of the stop con-
162 Benjamin

sonants consisted of a wide band of acoustical energy due to supraglottal

plosive release, while the silent interval consisted of that segment in
which no energy above 300 Hz was present. These measurements were
averaged across 18 phonemes to reduce articulatory variations due to
phonetic context.
Average stressed and unstressed vowel durations as well as average
formant frequencies for each vowel were measured for speakers in each
subject group (younger males, older males, younger females, older fe-
males). Vowel duration was defined by giottal pulses and/or formant initi-
ation and termination. Formant frequency was determined by the mid-
point of the steady-state portion of each vowel. The frequency midpoint
of the first and second formants of each unstressed vowel in the repeated
sentence " H e has a blue ball" was measured. The average ratio of the
first and second formant frequency for each vowel was then computed.
An analysis of variance with age and sex as between-subjects factors
and stress as the within-subject factor was used to determine the signifi-
cance of vowel durations. Two-factor analysis of variance with age and
sex as between-subjects factors determined the significance of consonant
segment durations. The first/second formant ratios were measured and
compared. An F-max test was used to determine the significance of target
variation between the young adult and older adult speakers.

RESULTS

The reliability of the physical measures was estimated by duplicate

measurement of the spectrograms. Two graduate speech pathology
students and the investigator measured the duplicate spectrograms for
four subjects. Both intrajudge and interjudge error was within ---25 Hz on
the formant frequency measure and +-3 msec for the durational measures.
The within-subject factor of stressing (F = 243.76, p < .001) and the
between-subjects factor of age (F = 5.65, p < .05) were significant for
vowel duration. The vowels in words that received sentence stress were
significantly longer than the vowels in unstressed words. In addition, the
older subjects produced vowels that were longer than those produced by
the younger speakers. Table I provides the average vowel duration for
each group of subjects.
The average VOT of voiced stop consonants (F = 6.97, p < .05) and
unvoiced stop consonants (F = 18.48, p < .001) were significantly re-
duced in the geriatric performance compared to the young adult produc-
tion. The burst segment duration of the stop consonants was not signifi-
Phonological Performance 163

Table I. Average Duration of Vowels (in msec)

Groups Unstressed vowels Stressed vowels

Younger males 141.4 246.7

Younger females 145.0 257.0
Older males 168.7 319.8
Older females 156.1 283.5

cantly different among the groups, but the silent interval of the stop
consonant was significantly longer (F = 16.99, p < .01) in older speech
performance than in young adult speech production. Table II provides the
average VOT, burst, and silent interval data for each group of subjects.
Vowel formant frequencies were examined. Centralization toward
the schwa was not observed as a characteristic of gerontological speech
production, although individual speakers did exhibit vowel reduction.
The distribution of individual vowel targets in the vowel quadrilateral
appeared more dispersed in the older speakers than in the young adult
speakers. This fluctuation and dispersal may be related to less control of
target production. To determine the significance of dispersion, F-max
tests were accomplished on the vowel formant ratios. Table III displays
the average vowel ratio and standard deviation for each vowel. The F-
max tests showed no significant differences for each vowel.

DISCUSSION

Vowel durations were greater in geriatric speakers than in young

adult speakers. Grosjean and Lane (1974) found that rate of articulation
was the most perceptually significant factor in changing the perceived rate
of speech. Consequently, the lengthening of vowels by older speakers
may have contributed to the slow rate of speech that is generally per-
ceived in the speech of the elderly.
If vowels provide the carrier of speech with consonants superim-
posed and if coarticulation is programmed (Ohman, 1966), the lengthening
of vowel duration could indicate neurological involvement and a mild
dysarthric component to geriatric speech. Slowness of speech is one
characteristic of dysarthric speech (Luchsinger & Arnold, 1965).
The interaction of stressing and age failed to attain statistical signifi-
cance, although a confidence level o f p < .06 was attained. Furthermore,
an ad hoc analysis revealed that older subjects produced unstressed
164 Benjamin

Table H. Average Stop Consonant Segment Durations (in msec)

VOT VOT Silent

Groups unvoiced voiced Burst interval

Younger males 49.0 3.4 15.9 48.4

Younger females 53.5 5.9 17.2 53.3
Older males 33.3 - 17.5 17.4 63.4
Older females 37.4 - 10.9 16.3 64.4

Table III. Average First Second Format Ratios (standard

deviations in parentheses)

Groups / i/ l ae l /ul /a /

Younger males .17(.02) .39(.04) .41(.05) .58(.09)

Younger females .14(.01) .41(.04) .39(.05) .57(. 12)
Older males .18(.04) .39(.07) .44(.08) .64(.06)
Older females .16(.03) .38(.06) .41(.12) .56(.08)

vowels that were an average of 10 msec longer (19.9%) than the stressed
vowels produced by the younger speakers. Although not statistically sig-
nificant, the generally slower articulatory performance of the geriatric
speakers compared to younger speakers was proportionately more exag-
gerated in stressed contexts. The elderly speakers appeared to use the
durational change strategy to indicate stress to a greater extent than did
the younger speakers. Neuromuscular changes due to aging that may
have contributed to the slow vowel characteristics in geriatric speech
affect the speech production system to a greater degree when stressing
considerations (e.g., quick variations of durational aspects) are involved.
The added work load placed upon the system to produce stressed articu-
lation may affect the performance more than unstressed articulation.
Consequently, further research on geriatric speech could be designed to
tax the system in continuous speech (e.g., by using tongue-twisters and
quick speech and by focusing attention on semantic aspects of speech).
Although these tasks are less natural than ordinary reading or speaking
tasks, the stress upon the system in continuous speech should yield im-
portant information concerning articulatory performance of the phono-
logical component of language.
The vowel formants did not show a general centralization or reduc-
tion of vowels toward the neutral phoneme, the schwa. Since older
Phonological Performance 165

speakers produced vowels of longer durations, vowel centralization due

to decreased duration did not occur. Since there were indications of
vowel reduction for individual speakers, formant ratios tended to be more
dispersed through the vowel quadrilateral for gerontological speakers
compared to young adult speakers. Centralization of vowels without re-
duction of vowel duration by certain older speakers may be related to less
precise articulatory control. Although articulatory performance was not
as consistent as that of younger adults, the older speakers did produce
well-differentiated vowels. This differentiation demonstrates that the
phoneme image was not distorted by the gerontological speakers and that
performance differences were not so extensive as to distort the intelligi-
bility and phoneme differentiation of the vowels.
Although performance differences in VOT between younger and
older speakers may be related to physiological changes that occur with
advancing age, the ability to generate a steady subglottal breath pressure
for speech purposes does not seem affected. Adams (1975) suggested that
the inability to generate a steady and sufficient subglottal pressure in-
creased the VOT duration. Since the present study revealed that VOT
values for the older speakers were actually shorter than VOT durations of
the younger speakers, the ability of older speakers to generate subglottal
pressure does not produce observable differences in VOT.
Other physiological changes due to aging appear to affect perform-
ance measured by VOT values to a greater degree. The decrease in
muscle tone, strength, and tissue mass among the older population rather
than the production of subglottal pressure may explain the shorter VOT
values exhibited by the older subjects. The reduced thickness of the folds
that accompanies aging (Luchsinger & Arnold, 1965) may contribute to
the decreased VOT. This reduction in the mass of the folds (Pressman &
Keleman, 1970), as well as a reduction of muscle tone, may result in a
reduction of the subglottal pressure necessary to set the folds into vibra-
tion. A shorter VOT would occur. While the differences in VOT are
statistically significant, they are not extensive enough to affect phonemic
realization. However, the VOT differences may contribute to the percep-
tion of imprecise articulation generally observed in gerontological speech.
Differences in burst duration of the consonants were not statistically
significant and do not appear to be dependent upon physiological chages
that occurred in the aged. The burst is an impulse of air vibration caused
by the transient excitation of the vocal tract upon release of the articula-
tory closure. Since pressure differential is known to affect burst duration,
these results contradict the notions that older subjects fail to generate
sufficient aerodynamic pressure and that articulatory functioning in the
166 Benjamin

nonpathological geriatric adult is insufficient for articulatory valving. This

area of articulatory performance is not affected by physiological changes
associated with aging.
The older speakers produced significantly longer silent intervals in
stop consonants. It is possible that the ability to set the folds into vibra-
tion in voiced stops is affected by aging. Since VOT is reduced in the
geriatric speakers and burst is not affected, insufficient air pressure is not
an adequate explanation. It is more likely that increased silent interval is
related to the inability of the older speaker to interrupt the air stream.
Closure of the vocal track would be less efficient with deteriorating
muscle control and strength; neuromuscular involvement may contribute
to the reduced speed in vocal track closure. As Ryan and Burk (1974)
suggested, a mild dysarthric component may be present in nonpatho-
logical geriatric speech. Dysarthric speech involves poor vocal fold con-
trol (Lehiste, 1965) and sound initiation difficulties (Kammermeir, 1969).
These processes, to a lesser extent, are also found in the present study of
nonpathological geriatric speech. Phonemic distortions associated with
dysarthric speech are not found in geriatric speech production, although
slow and imprecise articulation have been noted.
The imprecise articulation perceived in gerontological speakers is
revealed primarily in the acoustic duration of the articulatory segments.
These timing abnormalities have been related to physiological changes
that occur in aging. This study has attempted to show that articulatory
changes of aging affect performance. Phonological competency of non-
pathological geriatric speakers is not necessarily diminished but perform-
ance ability is affected by the aging process.

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