Can older adults enhance the intelligibility of their speech?

Speech understanding difficulties for older adults (OAs) are well documented. Very little is known about whether age-related changes affect their speech production as well. Intelligibility of conversational and clear speech sentences produced by five OA talkers was examined. The results of the sentence-in-noise listening tests revealed that OAs enhanced their intelligibility for young adult (YA) listeners through clear speech modifications. Importantly, though, OAs were less effective at improving their speech to benefit listeners compared to YA talkers [reported in Smiljanic and Bradlow, J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 118(3), 1677-1688 (2005)]. The results suggest that auditory and cognitive changes across lifespan can affect OA's speech patterns and intelligibility.