Abstract
Vocal pitch discrimination abilities were compared in sixteen children with vocal fold nodules (CwVN) and sixteen matched controls with typical voices (CwTV). Vocal pitch discrimination was also evaluated in thirty-five vocally healthy children and twenty adults to examine potential changes as a function of maturation. CwTV were categorized as either younger (N = 15, 5.6–7.7 years) or older (N = 20, 8.2–11.7 years). Participants completed two-alternative, forced choice listening tasks in which they judged whether pairs of sustained /α/ tokens were different in pitch. Each pair consisted of a base token with a fundamental frequency fo) of 216.2 Hz and a test token with a fo that was adaptively modified, according to the participant’s prior judgments. There were no significant differences in pitch discrimination abilities between CwVN and CwTV. Pitch discrimination abilities were significantly poorer in younger and older CwTV as compared to adults. Additionally, younger CwTV had significantly poorer discrimination abilities than older CwTV. Findings from this study suggest that CwVN do not have differences in pitch discrimination abilities, yet, therapies designed for CwVN should consider this developmental trend in perceptual abilities.
Highlights
The presence of a dysphonic, or altered, vocal quality can have a significant negative impact on a child [1,2,3]
Estimates of attention were examined in children with and without vocal fold nodules, and there were no significant differences for either estimate of attention between controls with typical voices (CwTV) and children with vocal fold nodules (CwVN)
These results suggest that pitch discrimination abilities are still developing, and the older children were approaching adult-like values, both older and young children continue to have immature perceptual abilities
Summary
The presence of a dysphonic, or altered, vocal quality can have a significant negative impact on a child [1,2,3]. Voice therapy is considered the best practice for the treatment of vocal fold nodules in children [18,19,20,21,22], yet it yields varied success rates [23,24]. This is likely due to multiple factors, including: Lack of transparency with regard to therapy, differing outcome measures, lack of understanding of the exact etiology of vocal fold nodules’ development, and an overall shortage of pediatric-focused research within the greater field of voice disorders [25,26,27].
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