Journal article
How Old Do You Think I Am? Speech-Language Predictors of Perceived Age and Communicative Competence
Journal of speech, language, and hearing research, Vol.62(7), pp.2455-2472
07/01/2019
DOI: 10.1044/2019_JSLHR-L-19-0025
PMID: 31265362
Abstract
Purpose: Spoken language serves as a primary means of social interaction, but speech and language skills change with age, a potential source of age-related stereotyping. The goals of this study were to examine how accurately age could be estimated from language samples, to determine which speech and language cues were most informative, and to assess the impact of perceived age on judgments of the speakers' communication skills.
Method: We analyzed narratives from 84 speakers aged 30-89 years to identify age-related differences and compared these differences to factors affecting perceptions of age and communicative competence. Three groups of raters estimated the speakers' ages and judged the quality of their communication: 44 listeners listened to audio-recorded narratives, 51 readers read transcripts of the narratives, and 24 voice raters listened to 10-s samples of speech extracted from one of the narratives.
Results: Older speakers spoke more slowly but showed minimal linguistic differences compared to younger speakers. Speakers' ages were estimated quite accurately, even from 10-s samples. Estimates were largely based on cues available in the acoustic signal-speech rate and vocal characteristics-so listeners were more accurate than readers. However, an overreliance on these cues also contributed to overestimates of speakers' ages. Communication ratings were not strongly related to perceived age but were influenced by various aspects of speech and language. In particular, speakers who produced longer narratives and spoke more quickly were judged to be better communicators.
Conclusion: Speakers tend to be judged on relatively superficial aspects of spoken language, in part because age-related change is most evident at these levels. Implications of these findings for age-related theories of stereotyping and speech-language intervention are discussed.
Details
- Title: Subtitle
- How Old Do You Think I Am? Speech-Language Predictors of Perceived Age and Communicative Competence
- Creators
- Jean K Gordon - University of IowaKim Andersen - University of IowaGabriella Perez - University of IowaEileen Finnegan - University of Iowa
- Resource Type
- Journal article
- Publication Details
- Journal of speech, language, and hearing research, Vol.62(7), pp.2455-2472
- Publisher
- AMER SPEECH-LANGUAGE-HEARING ASSOC
- DOI
- 10.1044/2019_JSLHR-L-19-0025
- PMID
- 31265362
- ISSN
- 1092-4388
- eISSN
- 1558-9102
- Number of pages
- 18
- Grant note
- John Templeton Foundation University of Chicago's Defining Wisdom Project
- Language
- English
- Date published
- 07/01/2019
- Academic Unit
- Communication Sciences and Disorders
- Record Identifier
- 9984258843502771
Metrics
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