Management of non-organic voice disorders: physiological bases of Accent Method for non-organic voice disorders

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to examine the physiological characteristics of the Accent Method of voice therapy. To study the effect of accentuation in the Accent Method, the increase in airflow rate (Airflow), fundamental frequency (F0) and sound pressure level (SPL) caused by accentuation were simultaneously measured by means of the Nagashima Phonatory Function Analyzer PS-77H.Participants were five female patients with functional dysphonia, two normal professional subjects and two normal untrained subjects. The results are summarized as follows:(1)The five patients with functional dysphonia showed significantly greater increases in F0, SPL and Airflow in the accentuations after voice therapy than before voice therapy.(2)In the normal group, the professionally trained subjects showed significantly greater increases in F0 and SPL in the accentuations than untrained and pathological subjects before voice therapy. There was no difference in increases in Airflow in the accentuations among the professionally trained, untrained and pathological subjects after voice therapy.(3)The increases in F0 and SPL after voice therapy were greater than before voice therapy. All patients could increase the accentuations by means of abdominal breathing. This could be explained by the fact that the Accent Method caused a greater flexibility of controlling phonation. Furthermore, all patients showed efficient voice production after voice therapy.