Speech breathing in senescent and younger women during oral reading

Breathing patterns in 20-30-year-old and 60-70-year-old women were recorded noninvasively during various nonspeech and oral reading tasks. On the nonspeech tasks, the only significant difference between groups was a smaller mean vital capacity for the older women. On oral reading, the older women had significantly greater means for absolute and relative inhalatory volumes, relative inhalatory airflow rates, absolute and relative volumes during nonphonatory exhalations, and relative exhalatory volumes. No significant mean differences between groups were found on absolute inhalatory airflow rates, absolute exhalatory volumes during speech, and absolute and relative exhalatory airflow rates. In both age groups, increases in sentence length were associated with significantly increased inhalatory and exhalatory volumes but mean airflow rates were not significantly affected by sentence length. Some differential effects of reading context on only the older group seemed to represent additional demands placed on their respiratory systems for speech breathing.