Fundamental frequency stability characteristics of elderly women's voices.

The purpose of this investigation was to gather information on how much variability on measures of jitter and fundamental frequency standard deviation (F0 s.d.) can be expected within individual elderly women when phonating sustained vowels "as steadily as possible." Fifteen repeat productions of the vowels /i/, /a/, and /u/ from 18 elderly women (69-90 years) were analyzed for F0 s.d. and jitter. Results indicate that intraspeaker variability on jitter and F0 s.d. measures in elderly women's sustained vowel productions can be quite considerable in some cases. This is a factor which needs to be considered in establishing normative data on elderly speakers' vocal capabilities.