Optimization of the English accent-based patterns in the aging voice

The primary objective of the study is to track speakers’ life-long modifications of pitch, intensity, and duration of syllables focusing on their variance used for accent-based prominence patterns in telephone communication. The basic assumption is that the accent is very important for running speech segmentation, word recognition, and intelligibility in English. Age-related changes in prosody keep accentual prominence sustained or even enhanced. Thus, the current study is focused on the perspective of finding prosodic capacities for maintaining accentual patterns essential for spoken communication. The analysis of 102 Americans’ speech patterns in phone conversations, balanced for gender and age, reveals that the middle age is defined by the maxima of human voice characteristics, whereas senior speakers preserve the prosodic contrast between accented and unaccented syllables due to compensation strategies.