Summary
Objectives/Hypothesis
This study aimed to determine the relationship among cognitive load condition and
measures of autonomic arousal and voice production in healthy adults.
Study Design
A prospective study design was conducted.
Methods
Sixteen healthy young adults (eight men, eight women) produced a sentence containing
an embedded Stroop task in each of two cognitive load conditions: congruent and incongruent.
In both conditions, participants said the font color of the color words instead of
the word text. In the incongruent condition, font color differed from the word text,
creating an increase in cognitive load relative to the congruent condition in which
font color and word text matched. Three physiologic measures of autonomic arousal
(pulse volume amplitude, pulse period, and skin conductance response amplitude) and
four acoustic measures of voice (sound pressure level, fundamental frequency, cepstral
peak prominence, and low-to-high spectral energy ratio) were analyzed for eight sentence
productions in each cognitive load condition per participant.
Results
A logistic regression model was constructed to predict the cognitive load condition
(congruent or incongruent) using subject as a categorical predictor and the three
autonomic measures and four acoustic measures as continuous predictors. It revealed
that skin conductance response amplitude, cepstral peak prominence, and low-to-high
spectral energy ratio were significantly associated with cognitive load condition.
Conclusions
During speech produced under increased cognitive load, healthy young adults show changes
in physiologic markers of heightened autonomic arousal and acoustic measures of voice
quality. Future work is necessary to examine these measures in older adults and individuals
with voice disorders.
Key Words
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Article info
Publication history
Published online: December 06, 2016
Accepted:
October 27,
2016
Footnotes
Early versions of this work were presented at the 44th and 45th Annual Symposiums of the Voice Foundation, Philadelphia, PA (2015 and 2016, respectively).
Identification
Copyright
© 2017 The Voice Foundation. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
