Department of Communication Disorders, Brigham Young University, Provo, UT.
Department of Statistics, Brigham Young University, Provo, UT.
J Speech Lang Hear Res. 2020 Mar 23;63(3):647-660. doi: 10.1044/2019_JSLHR-19-00028. Epub 2020 Feb 25.
Purpose This study examined differences in selected acoustic measures of speech and voice according to age and sex and across families. Method Participants included 169 individuals, 79 men and 90 women, from 18 families, ranging in age from 17 to 87 years. Participants reported no history of articulation disorders, stroke or active neurologic disease, or severe-to-profound hearing loss. They read aloud two passages to facilitate examination of the following speech and voice acoustic parameters: fricative spectral moments (center of gravity, standard deviation, skewness, and kurtosis), the proportion of time spent speaking, mean speaking fundamental frequency, semitone standard deviation (STSD), and cepstral peak prominence smoothed. Results The results indicated a significant age effect for fricative spectral center of gravity, spectral skewness, and speaking STSD. There was a significant sex effect for spectral center of gravity, spectral kurtosis, and mean fundamental frequency. Familial relationship was significant for spectral skewness, STSD, and cepstral peak prominence smoothed. Conclusions These findings revealed that certain speech and voice features change with age and some change differently for men and women. Additionally, speakers from the same family units may demonstrate similar patterns for prosody, voicing, and articulatory behavior. The results also demonstrated normal differences in speech and voice variation across age, sex, and family unit. Understanding patterns and differences across these demographic variables in healthy speakers is important to distinguishing more confidently between normal and disordered speech and voice patterns clinically.
目的 本研究旨在根据年龄、性别和家庭比较研究语音和嗓音的某些声学特征的差异。
方法 参与者包括 18 个家庭的 169 名个体，79 名男性和 90 名女性，年龄从 17 岁到 87 岁。参与者自述无构音障碍、中风或活跃的神经系统疾病，或严重到深度听力损失史。他们朗读两段短文，以便检查以下语音和嗓音声学参数：摩擦频谱矩（重心、标准差、偏度和峰度）、说话时间比例、平均说话基频、半音标准差（STSD）和声道谱峰值平滑度。
结果 结果表明，摩擦频谱重心、频谱偏度和说话 STSD 存在显著的年龄效应。频谱重心、频谱峰度和平均基频存在显著的性别效应。频谱偏度、STSD 和声道谱峰值平滑度存在家族关系的显著效应。
结论 这些发现表明，某些语音和嗓音特征随年龄而变化，而一些特征则因男性和女性而异。此外，来自同一家庭单位的说话者在韵律、发声和发音行为方面可能表现出相似的模式。结果还表明，在健康说话者中，语音和嗓音在年龄、性别和家庭单位方面存在正常差异。了解健康说话者在这些人口统计学变量中的模式和差异对于临床区分正常和异常的语音和嗓音模式非常重要。
