Auditory impressions of the speech of normal elderly adults

Forty speech-language pathologists listened to randomised recorded samples of the 'Grandfather Passage' read aloud by 10 normal elderly male adults, 10 normal young male adults and 6 dysarthric subjects. The speech samples were rated according to the 38 dimensions devised by Darley and colleagues for the study of the dysarthrias. The ratings of the speech of the older adults fell significantly further from 'normal' on a seven-point continuum than those given to the young adults on nine of the dimensions. The most apparent young/old differences involved laryngeal dimensions. Ratings for the normal geriatric subjects resembled those of the dysarthric groups in some respects. Several instances of misclassification of the normal elderly individuals as 'dysarthric' were also observed.