Do the Nonlinear Dynamic Acoustic Measurements, Nonlinear Energy Difference Ratio and Spectrum Convergence Ratio, Correlate with Perceptual Evaluation of Esophageal Voice Speakers?
Fan Zhang, Duy Duong Nguyen, Catherine Madill and 8 others
PMID 35817624WHAT IT FOUND
Nonlinear acoustic measures did not match expert ratings of esophageal voice quality, expert and non-expert intelligibility ratings, or transcription accuracy after total laryngectomy.
Key findings
01Expert dysphonia ratings for vowels averaged 4.72 on a 7-point scale, but the nonlinear measures did not significantly correlate with these ratings.
02Expert intelligibility ratings for connected speech averaged 4.57 on a 7-point scale, but the nonlinear measures did not significantly correlate with these ratings.
03Expert transcription accuracy averaged 95.8% for number counting and 69.00% for short phrases, but the nonlinear measures did not significantly correlate with these accuracy scores.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for SLPs
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What it does not show
The study included only esophageal voices, so the ratings were tightly clustered and may not reveal relationships that could appear with a broader range of voice types. The third non-expert rater was excluded because of low intra-rater reliability, so non-expert ratings were based on two raters. The microphone had a presence peak between 3-10-kHz, which may have biased the voice samples. Connected speech segmentation was done by listening and marking vocalization, which is more subjective than a moving-window method. Participants were required to be at least three months after completed radiation therapy and free of complications, so results may not apply to all esophageal speakers.
The easy way to misread this
Do not conclude that acoustic assessment of esophageal voice has failed. This study only tested NEDR and SCR in a narrow sample of esophageal voices and found no significant correlations with perceptual ratings.