Effects of Vocal Aging on Fundamental Frequency and Formants

In this paper we study changes of the articulatory organs from young adulthood to old age. In particular, we focus on how the larynx and vocal folds age along with the rest of the body. The objective of the paper is to automatically compute the effects of vocal aging on fundamental frequency and the formants. We compare trends of the fundamental, 1st, 2nd, and 3rd formant frequencies as the age progresses. We also investigate how different phonemes vowels in particular are affected by vocal aging. The data consists of Queen Elizabeth II’s annual Christmas speech from the age of 26 to 76. The idea is to have the same speaker over a long period of time. The results indicate that vocal aging causes the decline of the fundamental and 1st formant frequencies while the 2nd and 3rd formants are not closely correlated to vocal aging. In general, the correlation between the fundamental frequency and age is -0.90, while the average correlation for the 1st formant and age is -0.81. In particular, the correlation between the 1st formant frequencies of phoneme ‘o’ and age is -0.89 while for the 2nd formant it is 0.34.