Phonological performance in gerontological speech

The older speaker's production of phonology is affected by physiological and anatomic changes that occur with age. The differences in phonatory performance between a group of 20 young adults (aged 21 to 32) and 20 older adults (aged 68 to 82) were measured in the articulatory rate dimension. Spectrographic measurement revealed that older adults produced significantly longer vowels, longer silent intervals of stop consonants, and shorter voice onset time values than young adult speakers.