Background Several studies have investigated the acoustic effects of diagnosed anxiety and depression. Anxiety and depression are not characteristics of the typical aging process, but minimal or mild symptoms can appear and evolve with age. However, the knowledge about the association between speech and anxiety or depression is scarce for minimal/mild symptoms, typical of healthy aging. As longevity and aging are still a new phenomenon worldwide, posing also several clinical challenges, it is important to improve our understanding of non-severe mood symptoms’ impact on acoustic features across lifetime. The purpose of this study was to determine if variations in acoustic measures of voice are associated with non-severe anxiety or depression symptoms in adult population across lifetime. Methods Two different speech tasks (reading vowels in disyllabic words and describing a picture) were produced by 112 individuals aged 35-97. To assess anxiety and depression symptoms, the Hospital Anxiety Depression Scale (HADS) was used. The association between the segmental and suprasegmental acoustic parameters and HADS scores were analyzed using the linear multiple regression technique. Results The number of participants with presence of anxiety or depression symptoms is low (>7: 26.8% and 10.7%, respectively) and non-severe (HADS-A: 5.4 ± 2.9 and HADS-D: 4.2 ± 2.7, respectively). Adults with higher anxiety symptoms did not present significant relationships associated with the acoustic parameters studied. Adults with increased depressive symptoms presented higher vowel duration, longer total pause duration and short total speech duration. Finally, age presented a positive and significant effect only for depressive symptoms, showing that older participants tend to have more depressive symptoms. Conclusions Non-severe depression symptoms can be related to some acoustic parameters and age. Depression symptoms can be explained by acoustic parameters even among individuals without severe symptom levels.

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This study addresses effects of age and gender on acoustics of European Portuguese oral vowels, given to the fact of conflicting findings reported in prior research. Fundamental frequency (F0), formant frequencies (F1 and F2) and duration of vowels produced by a group of 113 adults, aged between 35 and 97 years old, were measured. Vowel space area (VSA) according to gender and age was also analysed. The results revealed that the most consistent age-related effect was an increase in vowel duration in both genders. F0 decreases above [50-64] for female and for male data suggests a slight drop over the age range [35-64] and then an increase in an older age. That is, F0 tends to be closer between genders as age increases. In general, there is no evidence that F1 and F2 frequencies were lowering as age increased. Furthermore, there were no changes to VSA with ageing. These results provide a base of information to establish vowel acoustics normal patterns of ageing among Portuguese adults.

The elderly population is quickly increasing in the developed countries. However, in European Portuguese (EP) no studies have examined the impact of age-related structural changes in speech acoustics. The purpose of this paper is to analyse the effect of age ([60-70], [71-80] and [81-90]), gender and type of vowel in the acoustic characteristics (fundamental frequency (F0), first formant (F1), second formant (F2) and duration) of the EP vowels. A sample of 78 speakers was selected from the database of elderly speech collected by Microsoft Language Development Center (MLDC) within the Living Usability Lab (LUL) project. It was observed that duration is the only parameter that significantly changes with ageing, being the highest value found in the [81-90] group. Moreover, F0 decreases in females and increases in males with ageing. In general, F1 and F2 decreases with ageing, mainly in females. Comparing the data obtained with the results of previous studies with adult speakers, a trend towards the centralization of vowels with ageing is observed. This investigation is the starting point for a broader study which will allow to analyse the changes in vowels acoustics from childhood to old age in EP.

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