Purpose: The aim of this study was to use the Daily Phonotrauma Index (DPI) to quantify group-based changes in the daily voice use of patients with phonotraumatic vocal hyperfunction (PVH) after receiving voice therapy as the sole treatment. This is part of an ongoing effort to validate an updated theoretical framework for PVH. Method: A…

Purpose: Relative fundamental frequency (RFF) is an acoustic measure that is sensitive to functional voice differences in adults. The aim of the current study was to evaluate RFF in children, as there are known structural and functional differences between the pediatric and adult vocal mechanisms. Method: RFF was analyzed in 28 children with vocal…

Background: Published best-practice guidelines and standardized protocols for voice assessment recommend multidisciplinary evaluation utilizing a comprehensive range of clinical measures. Previous studies report variations in assessment practices when compared with these guidelines. Aims: To provide an up-to-date evaluation of current global…

Purpose: Vocal roughness is often present in many voice disorders but the assessment of roughness mainly depends on the subjective auditory-perceptual evaluation and lacks acoustic correlates. This study aimed to apply the concept of roughness in general sound quality perception to vocal roughness assessment and to characterize the relationship…

Purpose: Auditory-perceptual evaluation is essential for the clinical assessment of voice disorders. Unstable perceptual voice evaluation has been shown for inexperienced listeners as compared to expert listeners. We examined the effects of perceptual training with external auditory anchors with and without immediate feedback on the evaluation of…

Purpose: In this study, the authors aimed to (a) determine whether phonatory airflows and estimated subglottal pressures (est-P[subscript sub]) for women with primary muscle tension dysphonia/aphonia (MTD/A) differ from those for healthy speakers; (b) identify different aerodynamic profile patterns within the MTD/A subject group; and (c) determine…

Purpose: The Consensus Auditory-Perceptual Evaluation of Voice (CAPE-V) was developed to provide a protocol and form for clinicians to use when assessing the voice quality of adults with voice disorders (Kempster, Gerratt, Verdolini Abbott, Barkmeier-Kramer, & Hillman, 2009). This study examined the reliability and the empirical validity of the…

Purpose: To determine whether experienced and inexperienced listeners rate postthyroidectomy voice samples similarly using the Consensus Auditory-Perceptual Evaluation of Voice (CAPE-V). Method: Prospective observational study of voice quality ratings of randomized and blinded voice samples was performed. Twenty-one postthyroidectomy patients'…

Purpose: Evidence-based practice (EBP) entails a critical mindset and rigorous methods that foster the judicious integration of scientific evidence into clinical decision making. The purpose of this tutorial is to present strategies, resources, and examples to help speech-language pathologists get started in EBP for childhood speech and language…

This study, involving 20 adults, introduced a relative target method to examine the fine force control characteristics of the lips. Load equalization for each lip was accomplished by establishing four submaximal target levels related to maximum voluntary closing force. The upper lip was found to be more stable in controlling force at all levels.…

Sixteen listeners (10 expert, 6 naive) judged the dissimilarity of pairs of voices drawn from pathological and normal populations. Only parameters that showed substantial variability were perceptually salient across listeners. Results suggest that traditional means of assessing listener reliability in voice perception tasks may not be appropriate.…

This paper describes the Vocal Demodulator as a new device for analysis of vocal tremor. The Vocal Demodulator produces amplitude-demodulated and frequency-demodulated outputs and measures the frequency and level of low-frequency tremor components in sustained phonation. The paper describes quantification of the demodulation process, validation…

A new method is presented for the parameterization of glottal volume velocity waveforms that have been estimated by inverse filtering acoustic speech pressure signals. The new technique combines two features of voice production: the AC value and the spectral decay of the glottal flow. Testing found the new parameter correlates strongly with the…

A new method to calculate a spectral harmonics-to-noise (HNR) ratio is presented. The method discriminates between harmonic and noise energy in the magnitude spectrum by means of a comb-filtering operation in the cepstrum domain. HNR is seen to be a useful parameter in the analysis of voice quality. (Author/DB)