SLPPilotJournal of voice : official journal of the Voice Foundation2025

Early Insights Into the Role of Personality in Adherence to Voice Rest After Phonomicrosurgery.

Marianna Rubino, Ruiqing Stephanie Fan, Yin Yiu and 7 others

PMID 40057451

WHAT IT FOUND

Patients who scored higher on Extraversion used their voices less during post-surgery voice rest, meaning they were more adherent.

This contradicts the expectation that talkative people struggle to stay silent. Men showed a stronger link between Extraversion and voice use than women.

Key findings

01Higher Extraversion scores were associated with lower durations of voice use, indicating better adherence to voice rest protocols.

02The effect of Extraversion on adherence was significantly stronger in men than in women.

03Conscientiousness did not significantly predict voice use duration, contrary to hypotheses based on other health disciplines.

STILL TO COME

How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for SLPs

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What it does not show

The sample size was very small (25 participants), limiting the generalizability and power of the findings. The study combined complete and relative voice rest groups because they did not differ in outcomes, which simplifies the analysis but may obscure specific protocol effects. Personality was measured using a brief two-item-per-trait inventory (TIPI), which cannot capture lower-order traits or nuances of personality. The relative voice rest protocol was not standardized across clinical practice, and patients were not required to monitor their voice use in real-time conversations, potentially affecting adherence definitions. The study did not analyze the impact of occupation (e.g., singers vs. teachers) on adherence, which is a known factor in voice rest success.

Declared interests

The authors declared no financial or nonfinancial conflicts of interest.

The easy way to misread this

Do not conclude that Extraversion causes better voice rest adherence. This was a small pilot study with a mixed direction of findings, and the mechanism is not understood. The authors state that clinical applicability is premature and that these results are hypothesis-generating.

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