Prosodic changes with age: a longitudinal study with three public figures in European Portuguese

The analysis of acoustic parameters contributes to the characterisation of human communication development throughout the lifetime. The present paper intends to analyse suprasegmental features of European Portuguese in longitudinal conversational speech samples of three male public figures in uncontrolled environments across different ages, approximately 30 years apart.

Twenty prosodic features concerning intonation, intensity, rhythm, and pause measures were extracted semi-automatically from 360 speech intervals (3-4 interviews from each speaker x 30 speech intervals x 3 speakers) lasting between 3 to 6 s.

Twelve prosodic parameters presented significant age effects at least in one speaker. Group mean comparisons revealed significant differences between the youngest (i.e. 50 years) and the oldest age groups (i.e. 80 years) in seven parameters. The results from the analysis point to a lower and less variable fo, higher fo minimum, wider fo peaks, more vocal effort and more variable global intensity, slower speech and articulation rate, and also more frequent and longer pauses in older ages.

This longitudinal study has the potential to contribute to the characterization of the normal aging process, proving to be significant in the domains of human-machine communication, speech recognition systems, applied linguistics, or the implementation of strategies in communicative contexts with older adults.