Intelligibility of stop-plosive and fricative consonants produced by tracheoesophageal speakers in quiet and noise

Auditory-Perceptual and Pupillometric Evaluation of Vocal Roughness and Listening Effort in Tracheoesophageal Speech

OBJECTIVES

This study evaluated auditory-perceptual judgments of perceived vocal roughness (VR) and listening effort (LE) along with pupillometric responses in response to speech samples produced by tracheoesophageal (TE) talkers.

METHODS

Twenty normal-hearing, naive young adults (eight men and twelve women) served as listeners. Listeners were divided into two groups: (1) a with-anchor (WA) group (four men and six women) and (2) a no-anchor (NA) group (four men and six women). All were presented with speech samples produced by twenty TE talkers; listeners evaluated two auditory-perceptual dimensions-VR and LE-using visual analog scales. Anchors were provided to the WA group as an external referent for their ratings. In addition, during the auditory-perceptual task, each listener's pupil reactions also were recorded with peak pupil dilation (PPD) measures extracted as a physiologic indicator associated with the listening task.

RESULTS

High interrater reliability was obtained for both the WA and NA groups. High correlations also were observed between auditory-perceptual ratings of roughness and LE, and between PPD values and ratings of both dimensions for the WA group. The inclusion of an anchor during the auditory-perceptual task improved interrater reliability ratings, but it also imposed an increased demand on listeners.

CONCLUSIONS

Data obtained offer insights into the relationship between subjective indices of voice quality (ie, auditory-perceptual evaluation) and physiologic responses (PPD) to the abnormal voice quality that characterizes TE talkers. Furthermore, these data provide information on the inclusion/exclusion of audio anchors and potential increases in listener demand in response to abnormal voice quality.

Do the Nonlinear Dynamic Acoustic Measurements, Nonlinear Energy Difference Ratio and Spectrum Convergence Ratio, Correlate with Perceptual Evaluation of Esophageal Voice Speakers?

BACKGROUND

The acoustic assessment of phonation after total laryngectomy is challenged by signal aperiodicity which makes frequency-based acoustic measures less reliable. This is important for patients who use esophageal voice since voice samples mostly include type III (highly aperiodic) and 4 (chaotic) signals. As such, using non-linear measures, which are better suited for aperiodic phonation, may be useful to investigate the relationship between acoustic signal characteristics and perception of esophageal voice quality.

OBJECTIVES

This study aimed to investigate whether nonlinear dynamic acoustic methods, nonlinear energy difference Ratio (NEDR) and spectrum convergence ratio (SCR), were correlated with perceptual measures in subjects who used esophageal phonation.

METHODS

Thirty-one subjects who had undergone total laryngectomy and use esophageal voice as a rehabilitation method were included in this study. Expert and non-expert raters listened to the esophageal voice samples from the subjects and rated vowels and connected speech samples on a scale from 1 to 7 on dysphonia severity and intelligibility. In addition, non-linear acoustic analysis was performed to calculate NEDR and SCR. Analysis from the raters was compared to the non-linear acoustic analysis to find the correlation between the variables.

RESULTS

There were no significant correlations between any of the non-linear acoustic measures NEDR and SCR and the perceptual ratings at the significance level of 0.05. Correlations were calculated for each acoustic measure among the expert raters and among the non-expert raters in both connected speech samples and sustained vowel fragments.

CONCLUSIONS

In conclusion, the nonlinear dynamic acoustic analyses of spectrum convergence ratio and nonlinear energy difference ratio do not have a significant correlation with perceptual measures of esophageal voice.