• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.2 no.4
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• pp.19-28
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• 2010

The purpose of this study was to increase the current understanding of the acoustic characteristics of voices with advancing age. The relationship between age-related changes in body physiology and certain acoustic characteristics of voice was studied in a sample of 80 men representing four chronological age groupings (20-29, 50-59, 60-69, 70-79) who were all of good physical condition. Each subject was asked to phonate the vowel /a/, /i/, and /u/ for as long as possible at comfortable frequency and intensity level and read the sentence. A promising voice analysis program (Multi-Dimensional Voice $Program^{TM}$) was used to measure the fundamental frequency ($f_0$), jitter, shimmer, $f_0$ variation, peak-amplitude variation, smoothed pitch perturbation quotient, smoothed amplitude perturbation quotient, soft phonation index, $f_0$-tremor intensity index, amplitude tremor intensity index, and noise-to-harmonics ratio from the samples.