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At least 991 records · Page 55Linked to original sources
PubMed1981

Treatment of phonological disability using the method of meaningful minimal contrast: two case studies.

The results of a treatment procedure using meaningful minimal contrasts are reported. The procedure was successful in reducing the frequency of the following processes: final consonant deletion, stopping of fricatives, and fronting of velars, which were exhibited in the speech of two children with phonological disability. Generalization of response to non-treatment words was also evidenced.

Child, Preschool↗
PubMed1984

Teflon injection in 16 patients with paralytic dysphonia: perceptual and acoustic evaluations.

Sixteen patients with paralytic dysphonia were treated with Teflon injection in the paralyzed vocal fold. Trained voice pathologists rated the pre- and postinjection voices on a 5-point scale for each 11 voice characteristics. Among these, aphonia, breathiness, and hypofunction diminished significantly after injection. The perceptual evaluation was correlated with acoustic data from long-time-average spectrum analysis, fundamental frequency distribution analysis, and waveform perturbation analysis. In this acoustic assessment, systematic changes were found in the long-time-average spectra, which agreed well with the perceptual data. In 12 of 16 patients the voice was both perceptually and acoustically improved after Teflon injection.

Adult↗
PubMed1986

The use of perceptual methods by new clinicians for assessing voice quality.

The purpose of this study was to determine the validity and reliability of using perceptual ratings for assessing voice quality in patients with vocal fold nodules or polyps. A 13-dimension perceptual rating system was modeled after systems currently in clinical use. To meet the criterion of 80% mean interjudge reliability, eight hours of training were required for four previously inexperienced listeners. Extended vowel phonations of patients and controls were then rated blindly by the same listeners. Interjudge reliability was greater than .90 for three dimensions judged in the pathological phonations, while intrajudge test-retest agreement was less than 75% on five dimensions. Validity was demonstrated with 100% correct assignment to group by computing a discriminant function employing all dimensions. Despite the extensive training procedures used, our reliability data were not comparable to those reported when highly experienced judges have been used, suggesting that the task of perceptually rating voice quality is difficult and requires extensive professional experience.

Humans↗
PubMed1987

Speech quality measurement and the management of stuttering.

This paper reviews the various approaches that have been made toward the investigation of speech quality in stuttering treatment. The review takes into account the findings of relevant perceptual and acoustic investigations in the area of normal communication skills and voice disorders. Similar consideration is given to investigations on the stutter-free speech of stutterers where the contribution and relevance of this research to the search for a reliable and viable measure of speech quality is discussed. The review concludes with an overview of some promising findings from recent studies on the use of listener ratings of speech naturalness in the measurement and modification of untreated and treated stutterers. Some avenues for research and issues that have emerged from these studies are also discussed.

Adult↗
PubMed1988

Acoustic and perceptual measurements of roughness influencing judgments of pitch.

Listeners matched the pitch of 36 clear to severely dysphonic vowels to the frequency of pure tones produced by a signal generator. Mean difference scores on pitch match correlated-.56 with jitter, -51 with jitter ratio, -.57 with spectrographic noise classifications, and -.64 with vocal roughness. Moderately to severely dysphonic vowels received significantly lower pitch match values than clear to mildly dysphonic vowels. Findings suggest that the effect of vocal roughness on pitch should be considered by the clinician who makes use of perceptual judgments.

Adolescent↗
PubMed1988

Description of laryngeal pathologies by age, sex, and occupation in a treatment-seeking sample.

The purpose of the present investigation was to describe the occurrence of laryngeal pathologies and their distribution across age, sex, and occupation in a group of persons seeking physician treatment. Data were collected on 1,262 patients seen by eight otolaryngologists from three different residential areas. The five most frequent pathologies reported were nodules, edema, polyps, laryngeal cancer, and vocal fold paralysis. For the total sample, pathologies occurred more frequently in females than in males; however, certain pathologies were more common to one sex than the other. The voice-disordered population appears to be getting older. The top five occupations associated with laryngeal pathologies were retired persons, homemakers, factory workers, unemployed, and executive/managers. Comparisons with similar investigations were made.

Adolescent↗
PubMed1989

Surface EMG and related measures in normal and vocally hyperfunctional speakers.

Surface electromyographic (EMG) signals were detected from the laryngeal area of 7 normal and 7 vocally hyperfunctional speakers during rest, two resisted-force maneuvers, vowel production, and connected speech. Vowel fundamental frequency, absolute and relative period perturbation, laryngeal-palpation ratings, and harshness ratings were acquired as well. The two groups differed significantly on all EMG measures except those associated with the resisted-force maneuvers, the vowel EMG-to-rest EMG ratio, and the speech EMG-to-rest EMG ratio. Moderately high correlations were evident between selected clinical measures and speech EMG values.

Adolescent↗
PubMed1979

Spectral noise levels and roughness severity ratings for vowels produced by male children.

This study investigated the relationship between spectral noise level (SNL) and perceived roughness in sustained vowels phonated by children. Twenty male children, ten presenting normal vocal quality and ten presenting vocal roughness associated with benign vocal cord lesions, served as subjects. The children individually sustained each of the vowels (Formula: see text) at one intensity and at two pitch levels (comfortable and high). Each vowel recording was analyzed to produce a 3-Hz bandwidth, amplitude-by-frequency acoustic spectrum. The levels of inharmonic (noise) components were measured for the range 100 to 2600 Hz within each vowel spectrum and the mean of those measures provided an index of vowel spectral noise level. Each recorded sample was also rated for degree of roughness, by 11 trained judges, using a five-point, equal-appearing intervals scale. The fundamental vocal frequency (fo) of each production also was measured. The results indicated that four subjects with vocal pathology phonated their vowel productions with a relatively extreme fo when compared to subjects with normal voice quality. It was also found that vowel roughness and SNL differed predictably for individual vowels and that, especially for normal-speaking subjects, roughness and SNL decreased with an increase in fo. Further, for both subject groups, SNL measures were correlated positively and moderately highly with perceived roughness.

Child↗
PubMed1985

Correspondence between an accelerometric nasal/voice amplitude ratio and listeners' direct magnitude estimations of hypernasality.

Miniature accelerometers were used to transduce nasal and anterior-neck tissue vibrations of 12 hypernasal and 3 normal children. The accelerometric voltages provided an analog implementation of Horii's (1980) nasal/voice ratio. Simultaneous audio recordings were later evaluated for hypernasality by listeners. Listeners' direct magnitude estimations (DME) of hypernasality were highly correlated with the accelerometric nasal/voice ratio when the stimulus sentences contained obstruents, nonnasal semivowels, and vowels. No correlation existed between DME and accelerometric values when the stimulus sentences contained primarily nasal semivowels and vowels.

Child↗
PubMed1986

Speech waveform perturbation analysis: a perceptual-acoustical comparison of seven measures.

The performance of seven acoustic measures of cycle-to-cycle variations (perturbations) in the speech waveform was compared. All measures were calculated automatically and applied on running speech. Three of the measures refer to the frequency of occurrence and severity of waveform perturbations in special selected parts of the speech, identified by means of the rate of change in the fundamental frequency. Three other measures refer to statistical properties of the distribution of the relative frequency differences between adjacent pitch periods. One perturbation measure refers to the percentage of consecutive pitch period differences with alternating signs. The acoustic measures were tested on tape recorded speech samples from 41 voice patients, before and after successful therapy. Scattergrams of acoustic waveform perturbation data versus an average of perceived deviant voice qualities, as rated by voice clinicians, are presented. The perturbation measures were compared with regard to the acoustic-perceptual correlation and their ability to discriminate between normal and pathological voice status. The standard deviation of the distribution of the relative frequency differences was suggested as the most useful acoustic measure of waveform perturbations for clinical applications.

Adult↗
PubMed1988

Automatic phonetogram recording supplemented with acoustical voice-quality parameters.

A new method for automatic voice-quality registration is presented. The method is based on a technique called phonetography, which is the registration of the dynamic range of a voice as a function of fundamental frequency. In the new phonetogram-recording method fundamental frequency (Fo) and sound-pressure level (SPL) are automatically measured and represented in an XY-diagram. Three additional acoustical voice-quality parameters are measured simultaneously with Fo and SPL: (a) jitter in the Fo as a measure for roughness, (b) the SPL difference between the 0-1.5 kHz and the 1.5-5 kHz bands as a measure for sharpness, and (c) the vocal-noise level above 5 kHz as a measure for breathiness. With this method, the voice-quality parameter values, which may change substantially as a function of Fo and SPL, are pinned to a reference position in the patient's total vocal range. Seen as a reference tool, the phonetogram opens the possibility for a more meaningful comparison of voice-quality data. Some examples, demonstrating the dependence of the chosen quality parameters on Fo and SPL are given.

Humans↗
PubMed1990

Listener experience and perception of voice quality.

Five speech-language clinicians and 5 naive listeners rated the similarity of pairs of normal and dysphonic voices. Multidimensional scaling was used to determine the voice characteristics that were perceptually important for each voice set and listener group. Solution spaces were compared to determine if clinical experience affects perceptual strategies. Naive and expert listeners attended to different aspects of voice quality when judging the similarity of voices, for both normal and pathological voices. All naive listeners used similar perceptual strategies; however, individual clinicians differed substantially in the parameters they considered important when judging similarity. These differences were large enough to suggest that care must be taken when using data averaged across clinicians, because averaging obscures important aspects of an individual's perceptual behavior.

Clinical Competence↗
PubMed1990

Predicting voice quality of deaf speakers on the basis of glottal characteristics.

Twenty profoundly deaf and 5 normal-hearing subjects produced 225 sustained vowels/a, i, u/at different pitch levels and 75 phonetically balanced sentences, while vocal fold vibration was recorded through an electrolaryngograph (ELG). The utterances recorded on audio tape were judged by 10 experienced listeners on general voice quality, breathiness, hoarseness, and laryngeal strain on a 5-point scale. Seven parameters describing time-domain characteristics of the ELG-signal were extracted online by a special purpose computer system. Measurements were made over 500 consecutive vibratory cycles (10-cycle window), yielding a mean and standard deviation for each parameter per utterance. All data were submitted to analysis of variance and multiple regression analyses. Multiple correlations between glottal parameters and judged voice deviations varied between .46 and .70 indicating that overall prediction cannot reliably be based on these parameters, although severe cases of deaf voice deviations may be detectable.

Adolescent↗
PubMed1990

Short-term stability measures for the evaluation of vocal quality.

The vocal quality of 64 normal subjects and 57 subjects suffering various degrees of glottal cancer was investigated using acoustic measures of six different aspects of the voice signal: tone period perturbation, amplitude perturbation, waveform perturbation, vocal noise, spectral periodicity and spectral distortion. The measures were estimated taking the glottal cycle as temporal reference unit to make the influence of the differences in tone period from one person to another as low as possible. The measures were evaluated with regard to (a) their ability to discriminate between healthy and sick subjects, and (b) their correlation with the perceptual evaluation of four trained listeners. The results suggest that signal processing techniques are unsatisfactory for clinical diagnoses but useful for monitoring voice quality.

Aged↗
PubMed1991

Multidimensional scaling analysis of dysphonia in two speaker groups.

The objective of this research was to identify perceptually relevant features of 30 dysphonic female voices. The perceptual dimensions used by listeners in judging the similarity of the dysphonic voices were derived in two multidimensional scaling (MDS) procedures using ALSCAL. Three dimensions were extracted in each MDS solution and accounted for approximately 60% of the total variance in the judgments. The three dimensions were related to measures of intensity, frequency, and perturbation. The results are discussed in relation to how clinicians use perceptual judgments in evaluating dysphonic voices.

Analysis of Variance↗
PubMed1991

Laryngeal perturbation analysis: minimum length of analysis window.

Laryngeal perturbation measures have been applied to the analysis of cycle-to-cycle changes in periodicity and amplitude of the acoustic voice signal for more than 25 years. Although such measures enjoy widespread clinical application, there is little agreement about basic methodology, including the length of signal to be analyzed. The purpose of this study was to examine changes in laryngeal perturbation measures as a function of length of signal analyzed in 18 subjects who complained of symptoms of possible laryngeal dysfunction. The results showed that as many as 190 cycles may be necessary before jitter asymptotes and as many as 130 cycles may be necessary before shimmer asymptotes. Pathological voices may require a longer analysis window for perturbation analysis than do nonpathological voices.

Adult↗
PubMed1991

Comparison of acoustic voice perturbation measures among three independent voice laboratories.

The purpose of this study was to compare jitter and shimmer data measured with three different analysis systems, the Visi-Pitch PC system (Pine Brook) and two systems based on minicomputers (Chicago and Denver), as a preliminary step toward establishing recording and analysis standards. The results show that, although similar hardware and software used at independent laboratories can yield similar findings, differences in recording hardware as well as recording and analysis procedures can result in important differences in perturbation findings. Jitter measurements obtained with the Visi-Pitch were not consistently in good agreement with jitter measurements obtained from the minicomputer systems due, in part, to an interaction between the Visi-Pitch internal filter selected during the recording process and the novel method of pitch period determination used in the Visi-Pitch. Magnitude of shimmer measurements differed between the two minicomputer systems, in part because of differences in amplitude resolution of the A/D converters and recording noise. The correlation between the two shimmer data sets was relatively high, however, indicating that relative changes across utterances were comparable in spite of magnitude differences.

Adult↗
PubMed1994

A structured approach to voice range profile (phonetogram) analysis.

A new method to analyze voice range profiles (phonetograms) is described. The structured analysis is based on quantitatively determining the features: shape, area, and "speaking range" dynamics, without distorting the shape of phonetograms. The parameter sets describing these features are calculated independently of fundamental frequency, which makes it possible to compare phonetograms. Two phonetograms representing a normal and a pathological example are used to illustrate the proposed method. The process provides a tool for establishing normative data for specified groups.

Female↗