Turkish Standardized Reading Passage for the Evaluation of Hard Glottal Attack Occurrence Frequency

Abstract

This study aimed to develop a Turkish reading passage that can be used in evaluating the frequency of hard glottal attack (HGA) and to assess its reliability. This is a prospective case-control study. The Towne-Heuer reading passage is a valuable tool that can be used for the auditory-perceptual assessment of voice. The characteristics of the first four paragraphs of the reading passage were analyzed by a linguist. Then, a Turkish reading passage with similar characteristics was developed. The control group (n = 21) consisted of individuals with no voice disorder. The study group consisted of two subgroups that were diagnosed as having vocal fold nodules (n = 11) and muscle tension dysphonia (n = 10). A total of three listeners were evaluated for the frequency of HGAs. One of the listeners was a master's student, whereas the other two listeners were speech-language pathologists. Consistency between the listeners was evaluated by using the percent agreement and the kappa statistics. Intrarater reliability was assessed by the Wilcoxon sign test. The t test was used to evaluate potential differences between the groups. The results were considered as significant if the P value was <0.05. The average attack number in the study group was found to be significantly higher than the controls (P < 0.05). No significant difference could be discerned between the muscle tension dysphonia and vocal nodule subgroups (P > 0.05). Findings confirmed that HGAs are clearly related to the vocal hyperfunction; however, the mechanism of action needs more research. In addition, the relationship between syllable stress and HGA should be further researched to clarify the cause of the attack number differences between English and Turkish languages.