Aging Effect on Korean Female Voice: Acoustic and Perceptual Examinations of Breathiness

Overview

Journal Folia Phoniatr Logop

Publisher Karger

Specialty Otorhinolaryngology

Date 2016 May 11

PMID 27160514

Authors

Seung Jin Lee

Yoonhee Cho

Ji Yeon Song

Damhee Lee

Yunjung Kim

HyangHee Kim

Affiliations

Soon will be listed here.

Abstract

Objective: This paper sought to examine perceptual and acoustic characteristics in Korean female voices, focusing on the 'breathy' quality as a function of aging. In addition, we aimed to investigate if the three selected measures, H1-H2, H1-A1, and H1-A3, demonstrated any changes along a sustained vowel production.

Participants And Methods: A total of 42 participants were assigned to two age groups, young women and elderly women. All participants were asked to sustain /a/ as long and as steadily as possible. Perceptual judgments of breathiness were made on the GRBAS scale and by a direct magnitude estimation technique, while three acoustic parameters, H1-H2, H1-A1, and H1-A3, were measured at five measurement time points during the sustained vowel test.

Results: Results indicated that the H1-H2 and H1-A1 values were significantly lower for elderly women compared to young women, although no difference in the perceptual estimation of breathiness was found between the age groups. Among the acoustic measures, only H1-A1 was significantly regressed against the perceptual estimate of breathiness. In addition, no significant acoustic difference in the measures was found across the five measurement points.

Conclusion: Our findings suggest that the aging voice might not be universally characterized by the breathy quality, which hints at the need for further research on ethnic diversity in vocal quality.

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