Categorization in the Perception of Breathy Voice Quality and Its Relation to Voice Production in Healthy Speakers

Examining the Perception of Vocal Deviation by Dysphonic and Nondysphonic Women

AIM

To investigate the auditory perception of vocal deviation by dysphonic and nondysphonic women and to correlate the accuracy rate with acoustic measurements.

METHODS

In total, 24 dysphonic women allocated to an experimental group (EG) and 10 nondysphonic women allocated to the control group (CG) participated in this study. The volunteers filled in the vocal screening form the vocal symptom scale (VoiSS) self-assessment protocol and made voice recordings during the emission of the vowel /Ɛ/, whose degree of deviation was examined through perceptual-auditory and acoustic evaluation; all the participants underwent audiometry. Three experiments were conducted for the perception tests. The first experiment consisted of randomly presenting 38 stimuli in isolation, 10 of which were healthy voices and 28 with different degrees of deviation, so that each participant could classify them as normal or altered. In the second experiment, the participants heard only breathy and healthy voices with different degrees of deviation and had to discriminate the presence or absence of breathiness. The third experiment was similar to the second experiment but with a rough voice.

RESULTS

Women in the EG had a lower hit rate (52.2%) in identifying dysphonic voices than women in the CG (69.6%) (P < 0.001). The women in the EG had a lower accuracy rate in identifying predominantly rough (62.7%) and breathy (62%) voices, compared with the accuracy rate of the women in the CG (73% and 75.6%, respectively) (P value < 0.001). There was a moderate negative correlation between the hit rate of nondysphonic women and the shimmer values.

CONCLUSIONS

Dysphonia can interfere with the identification of dysphonic voices. Dysphonic women had a lower accuracy rate in identifying dysphonia and roughness and breathiness parameters than nondysphonic women.

Profiling Voice Characteristics of Female Speech-Language Pathologists

PURPOSE

The present study examines the effects of service delivery on voice quality and voice-related quality of life among young female speech-language pathologists in India.

METHOD

Forty-four female speech-language pathologists (aged 19-40) working in Karnataka clinics participated. A multifaceted comprehensive voice evaluation was conducted preservice and postservice delivery.

RESULTS

Auditory-perceptual analysis (Consensus Auditory-Perceptual Evaluation of Voice) identified a significant shift toward mild dysphonia after service delivery. Aerodynamic evaluation showed a decrease in maximum phonatory duration, suggesting reduced vocal efficiency. Acoustic analysis revealed significant postservice delivery changes in Acoustic Voice Quality Index (AVQI), Smoothed Cepstral Peak Prominence (CPPS), harmonics-to-noise ratio, F0, and jitter, reflecting negative impacts on voice quality. Quality of life assessments using the Voice-Related Quality of Life questionnaire revealed limited heterogeneity in scores.

CONCLUSION

These findings highlight the vulnerability of young female speech-language pathologists to voice problems due to service demands. The study underscores the importance of voice care practices and advocates for mandatory training programs across health care institutions to mitigate voice disorder risks. This research contributes to understanding the challenges faced by young female speech-language pathologists and emphasizes the need for strategies to promote vocal health and professional satisfaction.

Auditory Perception of Roughness and Breathiness by Dysphonic Women

OBJECTIVE

To investigate the auditory perception of roughness and breathiness by dysphonic women.

METHODS

Twenty-two dysphonic native Brazilian Portuguese women participated in this research. All participants underwent audiological evaluation and laryngeal examination to confirm the diagnosis. During the tests, they recorded the sustained vowel /Ɛ/. A speech-language pathologist performed the auditory-perceptual judgment of voice quality for these vocal samples, categorizing the general degree of vocal deviation (mild, moderate, and severe degree) and the predominant type of deviation (roughness or breathiness). Thirty-two (32) stimuli were selected from a voice database, including twenty-four (24) dysphonic voice samples and eight (8) voice samples from vocally healthy women. The authors conducted five perception experiments, being three categorization tasks (normal vs. deviated, breathy vs. nonbreathy, rough vs. nonrough) and two tasks for discriminating the degree of deviation (roughness degree and breathiness degree).

RESULTS

The experiments showed a difference between the answers for presence/absence of deviation, presence/absence of breathiness, and presence/absence of roughness in the stimuli, and a difference in the proportion of similar answers of dysphonic women (P < 0.001) regarding the identification of the deviation. Participants classified a large part of the deviated (57.9%), breathy (63.13%), and rough (65.31%) voices as normal. The degree of vocal deviation (P = 0.008) and the degree of roughness in the stimuli correlated positively with the proportion of similar answers of the participants. As for the discrimination of breathiness degrees, less deviated (normal and mild) voices were less discriminated, and more deviated (moderate and severe) voices were better discriminated. Regarding the discrimination of roughness degrees, only the voices with severe deviations showed good discrimination.

CONCLUSION

Dysphonic women had a high rate of not similar answers in the identification of normal and deviated voices. They identified more than half of the deviated voices as normal. Samples with more severe deviations were proportionally more identified as deviated by the participants. The greater the vocal deviation of the participants' voices, the smallest the number of similar answers. Participants had a high rate of not similar answers in the identification of normal and breathy voices. Dysphonic women show less ability to perceive mildly and moderately breathy voices in the breathy category. Participants had a high rate of similar answers in the identification of normal and rough voices. Dysphonic women show less ability to perceive mildly and moderately breathy voices in the breathy category. Participants show less ability to perceive only mildly roughness voices with similar responses. Dysphonic women could discriminate between voices with adjacent degrees of roughness but had a low percentage of similar answers for discrimination between voices with adjacent degrees of breathiness.

The Relationship Between Pitch Discrimination and Fundamental Frequency Variation: Effects of Singing Status and Vocal Hyperfunction

PURPOSE

The purpose of this study was to investigate the relationship between pitch discrimination and fundamental frequency (fo) variation in running speech, with consideration of factors such as singing status and vocal hyperfunction (VH).

METHOD

Female speakers (18-69 years) with typical voices (26 non-singers; 27 singers) and speakers with VH (22 non-singers; 30 singers) completed a pitch discrimination task and read the Rainbow Passage. The pitch discrimination task was a two-alternative forced choice procedure, in which participants determined whether tokens were the same or different. Tokens were a prerecorded sustained /ɑ/ of the participant's own voice and a pitch-shifted version of their sustained /ɑ/, such that the difference in fo was adaptively modified. Pitch discrimination and Rainbow Passage fo variation were calculated for each participant and compared via Pearson's correlations for each group.

RESULTS

A significant strong correlation was found between pitch discrimination and fo variation for non-singers with typical voices. No significant correlations were found for the other three groups, with notable restrictions in the ranges of discrimination for both singer-groups and in the range of fo variation values for non-singers with VH.

CONCLUSIONS

Speakers with worse pitch discrimination may increase their fo variation to produce self-salient intonational changes, which is in contrast to previous findings from articulatory investigations. The erosion of this relationship in groups with singing training and/or with VH may be explained by the known influence of musical training on pitch discrimination or the biomechanical changes associated with VH restricting speakers' abilities to change their fo.

Examining the Relationship Between Speech Perception, Production Distinctness, and Production Variability

Several studies have demonstrated that individuals' ability to perceive a speech sound contrast is related to the production of that contrast in their native language. The theoretical account for this relationship is that speech perception and production have a shared multimodal representation in relevant sensory spaces (e.g., auditory and somatosensory domains). This gives rise to a prediction that individuals with more narrowly defined targets will produce greater separation between contrasting sounds, as well as lower variability in the production of each sound. However, empirical studies that tested this hypothesis, particularly with regard to variability, have reported mixed outcomes. The current study investigates the relationship between perceptual ability and production ability, focusing on the auditory domain. We examined whether individuals' categorical labeling consistency for the American English /ε/-/æ/ contrast, measured using a perceptual identification task, is related to distance between the centroids of vowel categories in acoustic space (i.e., vowel contrast distance) and to two measures of production variability: the overall distribution of repeated tokens for the vowels (i.e., area of the ellipse) and the proportional within-trial decrease in variability as defined as the magnitude of self-correction to the initial acoustic variation of each token (i.e., centering ratio). No significant associations were found between categorical labeling consistency and vowel contrast distance, between categorical labeling consistency and area of the ellipse, or between categorical labeling consistency and centering ratio. These null results suggest that the perception-production relation may not be as robust as suggested by a widely adopted theoretical framing in terms of the size of auditory target regions. However, the present results may also be attributable to choices in implementation (e.g., the use of model talkers instead of continua derived from the participants' own productions) that should be subject to further investigation.

Perceptual and Acoustic Assessment of Strain Using Synthetically Modified Voice Samples

Purpose Assessment of strained voice quality is difficult due to the weak reliability of auditory-perceptual evaluation and lack of strong acoustic correlates. This study evaluated the contributions of relative fundamental frequency (RFF) and mid-to-high frequency noise to the perception of strain. Method Stimuli were created using recordings of speakers producing /ifi/ with a comfortable voice and with maximum vocal effort. RFF values of the comfortable voice samples were synthetically lowered, and RFF values of the maximum vocal effort samples were synthetically raised. Mid-to-high frequency noise was added to the samples. Twenty listeners rated strain in a visual sort-and-rate task. The effects of RFF modification and added noise on strain were assessed using an analysis of variance; intra- and interrater reliability were compared with and without noise. Results Lowering RFF in the comfortable voice samples increased their perceived strain, whereas raising RFF in the maximum vocal effort samples decreased their strain. Adding noise increased strain and decreased intra- and interrater reliability relative to samples without added noise. Conclusions Both RFF and mid-to-high frequency noise contribute to the perception of strain. The presence of dysphonia may decrease the reliability of auditory-perceptual evaluation of strain, which supports the need for complementary objective assessments. Supplemental Material https://doi.org/10.23641/asha.13172252.

The Use of Auditory-Perceptual Training as a Research Method: A Summary Review

OBJECTIVE

The purpose of this descriptive review was to document the current state of training to perform auditory-perceptual analysis as reported in the voice literature.

METHODS

A review of the literature was performed.

RESULTS

Thirty-six articles were included in the review. The theoretical basis of training, specific training methods employed, duration of training, stimuli used to train, vocal qualities trained, and the type of listeners used are reported.

CONCLUSION

There is wide variation to training procedures used in research including auditory-perceptual evaluation of voice quality. In order to begin to discover how to best train listeners for research and clinical settings, attention to the training methods used in research is necessary. Further, these training methods must be explicitly acknowledged and described to allow for adequate evaluation of research findings, comparison across studies, and to determine for which populations results might be applicable. The conceptual framework outlined in this study is a starting point to review voice quality research and to design future studies for which auditory-perceptual evaluation is taught to listeners.

Voice Onset Time in Individuals With Hyperfunctional Voice Disorders: Evidence for Disordered Vocal Motor Control

Purpose This study examined vocal hyperfunction (VH) using voice onset time (VOT). We hypothesized that speakers with VH would produce shorter VOTs, indicating increased laryngeal tension, and more variable VOTs, indicating disordered vocal motor control. Method We enrolled 32 adult women with VH (aged 20-74 years) and 32 age- and sex-matched controls. All were speakers of American English. Participants produced vowel-consonant-vowel combinations that varied by vowel (ɑ/u) and plosive (p/b, t/d, k/g). VOT-measured at the release of the plosive to the initiation of voicing-was averaged over three repetitions of each vowel-consonant-vowel combination. The coefficient of variation (CoV), a measure of VOT variability, was also computed for each combination. Results The mean VOTs were not significantly different between the two groups; however, the CoVs were significantly greater in speakers with VH compared to controls. Voiceless CoV values were moderately correlated with clinical ratings of dysphonia (r = .58) in speakers with VH. Conclusion Speakers with VH exhibited greater variability in phonemic voicing targets compared to vocally healthy speakers, supporting the hypothesis for disordered vocal motor control in VH. We suggest future work incorporate VOT measures when assessing auditory discrimination and auditory-motor integration deficits in VH.