Voice onset time in young and 70-year-old women.

This study was conducted to determine the effect of aging on voice onset time (VOT). Ten women between 20 and 30 years old and 10 women between 70 and 80 years old read CVC syllables embedded in a carrier phrase. Spectrograms were used to measure VOT for voiced and voiceless bilabial and velar stops in the context of high and low vowels. Findings revealed that VOT was generally the same in older and younger subjects, and both age groups maintained similar voiced/voiceless and bilabial/velar distinctions. Older subjects demonstrated significantly shorter VOTs only in certain contexts involving place of consonant production and vowel context. The effects of aging on VOT, therefore, seem to appear only in selected phonetic contexts.