Effect Of Voice Quality Research Articles

A lecturer’s voice quality and its effect on memory, listening effort, and perception in a VR environment

Many lecturers develop voice problems, such as hoarseness. Nevertheless, research on how voice quality influences listeners’ perception, comprehension, and retention of spoken language is limited to a small number of audio-only experiments. We aimed to address this gap by using audio-visual virtual reality (VR) to investigate the impact of a lecturer’s hoarseness on university students’ heard text recall, listening effort, and listening impression. Fifty participants were immersed in a virtual seminar room, where they engaged in a Dual-Task Paradigm. They listened to narratives presented by a virtual female professor, who spoke in either a typical or hoarse voice. Simultaneously, participants performed a secondary task. Results revealed significantly prolonged secondary-task response times with the hoarse voice compared to the typical voice, indicating increased listening effort. Subjectively, participants rated the hoarse voice as more annoying, effortful to listen to, and impeding for their cognitive performance. No effect of voice quality was found on heard text recall, suggesting that, while hoarseness may compromise certain aspects of spoken language processing, this might not necessarily result in reduced information retention. In summary, our findings underscore the importance of promoting vocal health among lecturers, which may contribute to enhanced listening conditions in learning spaces.

Effects on Voice Quality of Thyroidectomy: A Qualitative and Quantitative Study Using Voice Maps

ObjectivesThis study aims to explore the effects of thyroidectomy - a surgical intervention involving the removal of the thyroid gland—on voice quality, as represented by acoustic and electroglottographic measures. Given the thyroid gland's proximity to the inferior and superior laryngeal nerves, thyroidectomy carries a potential risk of affecting vocal function. While earlier studies have documented effects on the voice range, few studies have looked at voice quality after thyroidectomy. Since voice quality effects could manifest in many ways, that a priori are unknown, we wish to apply an exploratory approach that collects many data points from several metrics. MethodsA voice-mapping analysis paradigm was applied retrospectively on a corpus of spoken and sung sentences produced by patients who had had thyroid surgery. Voice quality changes were assessed objectively for 57 patients prior to surgery and two months after surgery, by making comparative voice maps, pre- and post-intervention, of six acoustic and electroglottographic (EGG) metrics. ResultsAfter thyroidectomy, statistically significant changes consistent with a worsening of voice quality were observed in most metrics. For all individual metrics, however, the effect sizes were too small to be clinically relevant. Statistical clustering of the metrics helped to clarify the nature of these changes. While partial thyroidectomy demonstrated greater uniformity than did total thyroidectomy, the type of perioperative damage had no discernible impact on voice quality. ConclusionsChanges in voice quality after thyroidectomy were related mostly to increased phonatory instability in both the acoustic and EGG metrics. Clustered voice metrics exhibited a higher correlation to voice complaints than did individual voice metrics.

Assessing vowel effects on voice quality, and voice quality effects on the respiratory system.

This study assesses (a) effects of vowel height and tense-lax status on the laryngeal closed quotient (CQ) and (b) whether respiratory volume changes vary with differences in CQ. German speakers produced words containing eight different vowels in normal and loud conditions. The only significant vowel effect was found for the /a:-a/ pair, with lower CQ in /a/ at normal intensity. There was an insignificant trend for lower CQ to be associated with more negative thoracic slopes. The CQ difference for the /a:-a/ contrast, which relies more on duration than other tense-lax pairs in German, requires further study.

Listening to a Dysphonic Speaker in Noise May Impede Children's Spoken Language Processing in a Realistic Classroom Setting.

Purpose The aim of this study was to investigate children's processing of dysphonic speech in a realistic classroom setting, under the influence of added classroom noise. Method Typically developing 6-year-old primary school children performed two listening tasks in their regular classrooms: a phoneme discrimination task to assess speech perception and a sentence-picture matching task to assess listening comprehension. Speech stimuli were played back in either a typical or an impaired voice quality. Children performed the tasks in the presence of induced classroom noise at signal-to-noise ratios between +2 and +9 dB. Results Children's performance in the phoneme discrimination task decreased significantly when the speaker's voice was impaired. The effect of voice quality on sentence-picture matching depended on task demands: Easy sentences were processed more accurately in the impaired-voice condition than in the typical-voice condition. Signal-to-noise ratio effects are discussed in light of methodological constraints. Conclusions Listening to a dysphonic teacher in a noisy classroom may impede children's perception of speech, particularly when phonological discrimination is needed to disambiguate the speech input. Future research regarding the interaction of voice quality and task demands is necessary.

A Moan of Pleasure Should Be Breathy: The Effect of Voice Quality on the Meaning of Human Nonverbal Vocalizations

Prosodic features, such as intonation and voice intensity, have a well-documented role in communicating emotion, but less is known about the role of laryngeal voice quality in speech and particularly in nonverbal vocalizations such as laughs and moans. Potentially, however, variations in voice quality between tense and breathy may convey rich information about the speaker’s physiological and affective state. In this study breathiness was manipulated in synthetic human nonverbal vocalizations by adjusting the relative strength of upper harmonics and aspiration noise. In experiment 1 (28 prototypes × 3 manipulations = 84 sounds), otherwise identical vocalizations with tense versus breathy voice quality were associated with higher arousal (general alertness), higher dominance, and lower valence (unpleasant states). Ratings on discrete emotions in experiment 2 (56 × 3 = 168 sounds) confirmed that breathiness was reliably associated with positive emotions, particularly in ambiguous vocalizations (gasps and moans). The spectral centroid did not fully account for the effect of manipulation, confirming that the perceived change in voice quality was more specific than a general shift in timbral brightness. Breathiness is thus involved in communicating emotion with nonverbal vocalizations, possibly due to changes in low-level auditory salience and perceived vocal effort.

Cognition and interpersonal communication: The effect of voice quality on information processing and person perception

Against the backdrop of cognitive load theory (CLT) it was tested if irregular voice increases processing demands on working memory (WM). An experiment was designed to expose N=54 participants to expository text delivered with a modal and a creaky human voice. Working memory capacity was measured by a secondary task on the visual modality. Listening to a creaky voice quality consumes more cognitive capacity as indicated by the significant decrease in secondary task performance; also, retention of information was found to be impaired. Results are explained within the framework of CLT and implications for professional communication are discussed.

感情判別における声質の影響

感情判別における声質の影響

Perceived age in normal and disordered voices.

An experiment was conducted to identify the contribution of voice quality to perceived age. Voice quality effects were assessed in age estimation experiments using (1) natural pathological stimuli that incorporated voice qualities of interest and (2) young normal voices in which two voice cues, hoarseness and tremor, were modified through resynthesis. The disordered samples included single sentences from 227 talkers included in the Kay Elemetrics database of disordered samples. The resynthesized samples were sentences from ten young males in which (1) the f0 contour was multiplied by a random number within a fixed range (hoarseness) or (2) a 5–9‐Hz wave with an amplitude of 7.5% of the original f0 value was incorporated (tremor). Sixty navive listeners estimated all speakers ages in years. The results demonstrated that disordered voices were overestimated in age by 11 years, with the greatest mismatch in chronologic and perceived age reaching 47 years older. The addition of synthetic tremor and hoarseness...

Performance Enhancement on Voice using VAD Algorithm and Cepstral Analysis

The Transport of Voice Over Network has been existing for a long time. Due to the bad quality of speech and absence of useful service, it has not yet been widely spread. The benefits of reduced cost and bandwidth savings of carrying voice over data network is associated with Quality of Service (QoS). Many different techniques and protocols are used to improve the quality of service in voice over data network. We review our data on the voice quality effects of background noise and the compression option of suppressing transmission during silence. Because the main problem of echo has emerged repeatedly in the VOIP environment, we review this issue in voice over data communication network is used to VAD algorithms and cepstral analysis of VOIP network performance.

Effect of voice quality on frequency-warped modeling of vowel spectra

The perceptual accuracy of an all-pole representation of the spectral envelope of voiced sounds may be enhanced by the use of frequency-scale warping prior to LP modeling. For the representation of harmonic amplitudes in the sinusoidal coding of voiced sounds, the effectiveness of frequency warping was shown to depend on the underlying signal spectral shape as determined by phoneme quality. In this paper, the previous work is extended to the other important dimension of spectral shape variation, namely voice quality. The influence of voice quality attributes on the perceived modeling error in frequency-warped LP modeling of the spectral envelope is investigated through subjective and objective measures applied to synthetic and natural steady sounds. Experimental results are presented that demonstrate the feasibility and advantage of adapting the warping function to the signal spectral envelope in the context of a sinusoidal speech coding scheme.

The impact of impaired vocal quality on children's ability to process spoken language

This paper investigated the effect of voice quality on children's ability to process spoken language. A group of 24 children, mean age 11 years 5 months, listened to a series of recorded short passages, half spoken by a female with normal voice and half spoken by a female with a classic vocal impairment (dysphonic voice). The children were tested for their ability to recall words and to draw a final target inference. Children performed better on both preceding indices when listening to the normal voice. The implications of the findings are discussed, with particular reference to the classroom situation.

Effect of voice quality on the tense/lax distinction for English vowels

For a variety of East and West African languages, voice quality covaries with tongue root advancement. In these vowel systems, an advanced tongue root vowel is produced with breathy phonation, whereas, a modal voice quality is used with nonadvanced tongue root. A potential explanation for this regularity, based on the interaction between acoustic effects of vocal-tract shape and of voice quality, was evaluated. Because it has been suggested that the advanced tongue root contrast is similar to the tense/lax contrast in English, male and female series varying perceptually from tense to lax were synthesized for several English vowels. Breathy versions of each series were created by increasing spectral tilt. Results from identification tasks indicated that, in general, breathy phonation led to more high vowels being identified as tense. In addition, the effect of breathiness was greater for vowels modeled after female productions. These results suggest that the covariation in African languages may be consistent with the general principle of auditory enhancement and adaptive dispersion. The findings may also be relevant to gender differences in voice quality. [Work supported by NIDCD Grant No. DC-00719 and NSF Grant No. DBS-9258482.]

Visual Fixation and the Effect of Voice Quality and Content Differences in 2-Month-Old Infants

The purpose of the two studies to be reported here was to extend the findings reported by Boyd in Chapter VI to other characteristics of natural language stimuli using the same technique. It has been shown that young infants can make very fine distinctions in isolated language-related stimuli such as consonants (Eimas, Siqueland, Jusczyk, & Vigorito 1971; Moffitt 1971; Trehub & Rabinovitch 1972). While it is possible that early languagelistening experience for the infant is characterized by some sort of systematic attention to single language elements, the environment, in fact, presents the infant with very complex and extended, though probably repetitious, language samples. There have been several reports that have given evidence concerning the role of complex language stimuli in infant behavior (Tulkin 1971; Tulkin & Kagan 1972; Turnure 1971). The most consistent findings seem to relate to social class variables. And, the subjects of these studies were all over 3 months of age and most of them older. The Boyd demonstration with 7and 8-week-old infants is probably the clearest evidence at the youngest age that infants can discriminate between two different voices with all the complexity and grossness involved in such stimuli. However, Lewis (1951) reported that infants respond to an adult voice by

Effect of voice quality on communication.

No AccessJournal of Speech and Hearing DisordersResearch Article1 Jun 1956Effect Of Voice Quality On Communication Charles F. Diehl, and Eugene T. McDonald Charles F. Diehl Google Scholar More articles by this author and Eugene T. McDonald Google Scholar More articles by this author https://doi.org/10.1044/jshd.2102.233 SectionsAboutPDF ToolsAdd to favoritesDownload CitationTrack Citations ShareFacebookTwitterLinked In Additional Resources FiguresReferencesRelatedDetailsCited by Journal of Broadcasting26:1 (457-467)1 Jan 1982The effects of newscaster gender and vocal quality on perceptions of Homophily and interpersonal attractionKevin L. Hutchinson R. W. Rieber (1981) Phonatory and Resonatory Problems Communication Disorders10.1007/978-1-4757-9760-2_9 Journal of Broadcasting14:3 (317-324)1 Jun 1970Some effects of voice quality on retentionKen Hadwiger Audiovisual communication review10:3 (158-168)1 May 1962Five dimensions of “style” in educational TV programsEdgar Crane and Malcolm S. MacLean Speech Monographs28:1 (65-68)1 Mar 1961Pitch change and comprehensionCharles F. Diehl, Richard C. White and Paul H. Satz Speech Monographs26:3 (229-232)1 Aug 1959Rate and communicationCharles F. Diehl, Richard C. White and Kenneth W. Burk Review of Educational Research28:2 (107-116)1 Apr 1958Chapter IV: SpeakingWallace C. Fotheringham and Goodwin F. Berquist Areté18:2 (65-74)31 Dec 2019Hitos de la Evaluación Perceptual Auditiva de la Voz: ¿Hay Evidencia?Luisa Fernanda Angel Gordillo Volume 21Issue 2June 1956Pages: 233-237 Get Permissions Add to your Mendeley library History Published in issue: Jun 1, 1956PubMed ID: 13320523 Metrics Topicsasha-topicsasha-article-typesleader-topicsCopyright & PermissionsCopyright © 1956 American Speech-Language-Hearing AssociationPDF downloadLoading ...