Listener estimations of talker age: A meta-analysis of the literature.

Numerous studies, most of them cross-sectional studies using one sample per talker, have demonstrated that listeners make relatively accurate age judgments from hearing talkers' voices. The current study analyzed the results of several such direct age estimation studies to characterize better the perception of talker age over a larger number of individuals. A review of the direct age estimation literature was performed. Data sets from seven papers were reconstituted, and an analysis of the combined data (meta-analysis) including 530 data points was conducted. The reconstituted and combined data included talkers aged 10-90. Listeners appeared to overestimate age when talkers were younger and to underestimate it when talkers were older.