Attitudes Toward Younger and Older Adult Speakers: Effects of Varying Speech Rates

Undergraduates listened to tape recorded voices of either younger (20-22 years) or older (60-65 years) male speakers who varied in their rate of speech (slow, medium, and fast). The listeners evaluated the speakers on various personality and social characteristics, made causal attributions for success or failure of the speakers in hypothetical situations, estimated speaker ages, and rated the voices on several speech parameters. Overall, faster …