PURPOSE: Vocal hyperfunction (VH) is considered a functional voice disorder, resulting in voice complaints of hoarseness and fatigue; however, recent work suggests that voice changes in VH may result from impairments in the neural control of voice (specifically, how voice perception is integrated into voice production). This study sought to clarify whether impaired auditory acuity of vocal pitch and the temporal production of voice, two known impairments in speakers with VH, were correlated.
METHOD: The current study included 29 adults with VH. Vocal auditory perception was assessed via acuity to self-produced vocal pitch (quantified using an adaptive two-forced-choice paradigm). To investigate temporal acoustic measures of voice production, voice onset time (VOT) variability of voiced and voiceless stop consonants in a carrier phrase were separately assessed using a coefficient of variation (CoV). Two Pearson product-moment correlations were completed to assess the relationship between these measures of vocal perception and vocal production of either voiced or voiceless VOTs.
RESULTS: No statistically significant correlations were observed between auditory acuity and CoV of VOT for neither voiced nor voiceless stop consonants.
CONCLUSION: The current findings suggest that impairments in vocal pitch acuity and VOT production in VH are not governed by the same underlying mechanism. Further investigation is recommended to determine the etiology driving these vocal perception- and production-based impairments observed in prior work.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:bu.edu/oai:open.bu.edu:2144/42572 |
| Date | 14 May 2021 |
| Creators | Segina, Roxanne K. |
| Contributors | Stepp, Cara E. |
| Source Sets | Boston University |
| Language | en_US |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis/Dissertation |
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