Vocal Fry and Vowel Height in Simulated Room Acoustics.
Lady Catherine Cantor-Cutiva, Pasquale Bottalico, Carlos Toshinori Ishi and 1 others
PMID 29462822WHAT IT FOUND
Low-height vowels and pink background noise were associated with more automatically detected vocal fry in 40 healthy speakers.
The effect was small and not tested in voice therapy.
Key findings
01Low-height vowels produced more automatically detected vocal fry than high-height vowels.
02Pink background noise was associated with more automatically detected vocal fry after accounting for other variables.
03Vocal fry was more frequent on low vowels at the end of sentences than at the beginning, but combinations of vowel height and room acoustics were not statistically significant.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for SLPs
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What it does not show
The design was cross-sectional, so it cannot establish that low vowels or pink noise caused more vocal fry. Participants were 40 vocally healthy college-age native speakers of American English, not people with voice disorders. The outcome was automatically detected vocal fry in four target words, not a tested voice therapy outcome. The acoustic conditions were simulated and delivered through headphones, not real rooms. The position of target words in the passage was a potential confound, and only 22 participants completed the additional position task. The authors noted a small effect, around 2%, and no physical examination of the phonatory system was performed.
Declared interests
No conflicts-of-interest declaration appears in the supplied text. The publication types list NIH extramural research support.
The easy way to misread this
Do not conclude that using low-height vowels or pink noise will improve voice therapy. The study measured automatically detected vocal fry in 40 healthy speakers under simulated conditions, and the reported increase was around 2%.