Acoustic cues to perceived age in Cantonese-speaking population : acoustic analysis and direct age estimation study

Abstract

This study investigated the age-related changes in acoustic voice quality of Cantonese-speaking females and whether the presence of both contour and level tones improved the reliability of age estimation as compared to the presence of only level tone. Thirty female speakers ranging from young to old age were recruited to read aloud six Cantonese sentence stimuli and were recorded. The stimuli were designed in pairs to contain either only level tones or mixed tones (both level and contour tones). Speaking rate was also controlled. The recordings then underwent acoustic analysis. Another 34 listeners (18 females and 16 males) were recruited to participate in a direct age estimation study of the recordings. Acoustic parameters including fundamental frequency, jitter, shimmer, and harmonics-to-noise ratio were reported. They were found to be generally comparable to previous literature about English-speaking population. Mixed tone stimuli which contained both contour and level tones were found to yield more accurate age estimation than level tone stimuli.