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http://dx.doi.org/10.13064/KSSS.2022.14.1.037

The effects of speakers' age on temporal features of speech among healthy young, middle-aged, and older adults  

Kim, Yeji (Department of Communication Disorders, Ewha Womans University)
Lee, Song-min (Department of Communication Disorders, Ewha Womans University)
Choi, Min-kyung (Department of Communication Disorders, Ewha Womans University)
Jung, Sang-min (Department of Communication Disorders, Ewha Womans University)
Sung, Jee Eun (Department of Communication Disorders, Ewha Womans University)
Lee, Youngmee (Department of Communication Disorders, Ewha Womans University)
Publication Information
Phonetics and Speech Sciences / v.14, no.1, 2022 , pp. 37-47 More about this Journal
Abstract
The purpose of the this study is to observe the effects of healthy adults' age on temporal features of speech and identify which could differentiate older and young adults. We examined speech rates(i.e., overall speaking rate, articulation rate), occurrence of pause, and duration of pause per utterance by utilizing the National Institute of Korean Language's open corpus. We selected a total of 30 healthy adults (10 young, 10 middle-aged, and 10 older adults) in this study. There were significant differences among the groups in the overall speaking rate, articulation rate, total occurrence of pause, the occurrence of pause between syntactic words, total duration of pause, and duration of pause between syntactic words. The older and middle-aged adults showed slower speech rates and longer and more frequent pause than young adults. But there were no significant differences among the three groups in terms of pause within syntactic word. The overall speaking rate significantly differentiated older adults from young adults. These findings suggested that the effect of speakers' age was reflected in gradual changes in the temporal features of their speech.
Keywords
healthy adults; ageing; temporal features; speech; speech rate; pause;
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Times Cited By KSCI : 7  (Citation Analysis)
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