METHOD: One-hundred and seventeen speakers (18-83 years old, 46% men) were audio-recorded while performing non-word (repetition of "pataka") and real-word oral-DDK tasks ("butter cake" and " ([pha4tha1khan4])"). The number of syllables produced in 8 seconds was counted from the audio recording to derive the oral-DDK rates. A MANOVA was conducted to compare the rates between age groups (young = 18-40 years, n = 56; middle = 41-60 years, n = 39; older = 61-83 years, n = 22) and gender. In a second analysis, "pataka" results were compared between this study and previous findings with Hebrew speakers.

RESULT: No gender effects were found. However, rates significantly decreased with age (p  non-words (5.29 ± 1.23) > Mandarin words (4.91 ± 1.13). Malaysian-Mandarin speakers performed slower than Hebrew speakers on "pataka" task.