Acoustic and fiberscopic studies of the voice characteristics of school teachers under vocal abuse conditions with the loud voices of children

Abstract

It has been known that the incidence of vocal pathology was high in school teachers as they had to use a great amount of voice and loud phonation in noisy school settings with the children’s loud voices. A proper vocal hygiene program and voice therapy are effective treatments for these cases. The final goal of the treatment should be to obtain the skills to use effective and healthy phonation even in noisy environments. In our study, three school teachers with vocal nodules, three speech therapists who were trained to produce nonconstricted voice even in noisy environments, and ten college students with no laryngeal pathology (control group) spoke eight sentences with one target word in two environments: a quiet environment and one with meaningful multi-talker babble (MMB). Acoustic analyses and fiberscopic examination revealed higher sound pressure and F0 levels and laryngeal constriction in MMB for the teachers before therapy and the normal talkers, but two speech therapists kept similar F0 levels and laryngeal conditions in both environments. After voice therapy, teachers produced less constricted voice under noise. These results suggested the efficacy of voice therapy with MMB for teachers to obtain effective and healthy voice in their noisy work environments.