Development and Initial Validation of Phonation Quotient for Connected Speech: A Low-Cost, Indirect Aerodynamic Measure of Phonatory Airflow.
James A Curtis, Leyla E Jimenez, Isabel M Aberin-Angulo and 1 others
A new low-cost airflow measure derived from repeating a sentence tracks actual connected speech airflow in healthy adults.
It works best for speech tasks; the older vowel-based version still wins for sustained vowels. No voice-disorder data yet.
Key findings
1PQ-CS showed a significant positive association with directly measured mean flow rate during the repeated-sentence connected speech task (r = 0.566, p = 0.001) and during comfortably spoken single-sentence speech (r = 0.405, p = 0.026).
2PQ-CS demonstrated stronger associations with airflow during both connected speech tasks than PQ-SV, while PQ-SV showed its strongest association (r = 0.844, p = 0.001) with airflow during the sustained vowel maximum phonation time task, where PQ-CS was not significant (r = 0.241, p = 0.199).
3The validation was conducted exclusively in healthy adults without laryngeal pathology, so the ability of PQ-CS to differentiate people with and without voice disorders remains unknown.
Still to come
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for SLPs
Read the rest of this summary
You get three full summaries a month, free, and we do not ask for a card. Search, the TL;DRs and your library stay unlimited either way.
What it does not show
All participants were healthy adults with no laryngeal pathology, so the measure has not been tested in the populations SLPs actually treat for voice disorders. Each participant completed only one trial per task, whereas recommended practice is a minimum of three trials using the maximum value. Only one sentence stimulus was used; how PQ-CS changes with different speech materials, phonetic content, or speaking style is unknown. No a priori power analysis was conducted; the authors acknowledge the sample size reflects practical feasibility for a pilot. PQ-CS tends to overestimate true mean flow rate, the same pattern seen with PQ-SV, so it should not be read as an exact airflow value.
Declared interests
The authors declared no conflicts of interest. The study was not supported by any sponsor or funder.
The easy way to misread this
Do not use PQ-CS to diagnose or track voice disorders. It was validated only in healthy adults with no laryngeal pathology, and the authors state its diagnostic utility in voice-disorder populations remains unknown. The two regression equations for estimating mean flow rate from PQ-CS are explicitly described as preliminary and expected to change with more data.
Summarised by AI from the full paper, without a clinician reviewing it. Check it against the source before it changes what you do. Read it on PubMed →