Relationship Between Acoustic Voice Onset and Offset and Selected Instances of Oscillatory Onset and Offset in Young Healthy Men and Women.
Rita R Patel, Karen Forrest, Drew Hedges
PMID 27769696WHAT IT FOUND
In 56 adults with typical voice producing /hi/, vocal fold motion began before the acoustic signal, while steady vibration began after it.
At offset, the acoustic signal stopped between loss of steady motion and full vocal fold stop.
Key findings
01In adults with typical voice producing /hi/, vocal fold motion began before the acoustic signal, the acoustic signal began before first medial vocal fold contact, and sustained vocal fold vibration began after the acoustic signal.
02In the analysed /hi/ productions, the first loss of steady vocal fold vibration occurred before the acoustic signal stopped, first incomplete closure occurred around the acoustic stop, and complete cessation of vibration occurred after the acoustic stop.
03The gender difference was significant only for the interval between acoustic onset and first vocal fold contact, with women showing a 5.22 ms longer interval.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for SLPs
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What it does not show
Only adults with no previous vocal fold pathologies and normal voice were included, so it says nothing about patients with voice disorders. The task was repeated /hi/ at self-selected typical conversational pitch and loudness, so timing may change with other vowels, loudness, or connected speech. The timing measures were made from high-speed videoendoscopy and synchronized audio, not from ordinary acoustic voice recordings. The paper reports 92 adults recruited and 56 included in the analysis. 21 subjects could not be obtained because of heightened gag reflex, and data were excluded for failure to extract the audio signal (n = 10) and failure to synchronize the video and audio signals (n = 5). The authors say the model equations were fit to this data and need more data to see whether they generalize. The authors say more experiments on healthy and voice-disordered speakers are needed before the acoustic signal can serve as an independent metric of vocal control. The authors report large differences between people in the timing of first vocal fold contact and acoustic onset.
Declared interests
The authors reported no conflict of interest.
The easy way to misread this
Do not conclude that acoustic onset can replace direct vocal fold timing in voice assessment. The study was in healthy adults with no voice disorders, and the authors say more data are needed before the acoustic signal can serve as an independent metric of vocal control.