Summary
Purpose
Considering cepstral analysis of voice as a measure of overall severity of dysphonia,
we tried to investigate if these measures could be considered as a metric of vocal
fatigue as well. Since voice quality changes are seen as a result of vocal fatigue,
we wanted to find out if there were any correlations between the cepstral measures,
vocal fatigue symptoms, and auditory perceptual evaluation of voice in professional
voice users.
Method
The pilot study was conducted on 10 temple priests belonging to the Krishna Consciousness
Movement. We conducted a pre-post voice evaluation, which included recording voices
before the beginning of any temple preaching in the morning and after all the preaching
sessions in the evening. The priests also filled in the Vocal Fatigue Index (VFI)
questionnaire twice (morning and evening), and all the voice samples were analyzed
for GRBAS (Grade, Roughness, Breathiness, Asthenia, and Strain voice quality) rating
by speech language pathologists with voice expertise. Correlations were obtained between
the acoustic measures, VFI responses, and auditory perceptual evaluations.
Result
The findings of our pilot study didn't show any correlations between the cepstral
measures and the questionnaire responses or with the perceptual ratings. However,
the cepstral measures were slightly higher for evening recordings than the morning
recordings. Our participants did not experience or perceive any voice symptoms or
vocal fatigue.
Conclusion
Despite more than 10 hours of voice use per day for over 10 years, our participants
did not experience any voice symptoms or vocal fatigue. This finding indicates that
there may be diverse reasonings and opinions about the occurrence of voice problems
in various professional voice users. This is particularly because the participants’
responses to vocal fatigue symptoms had more of a psychological explanation (faith,
self-power, etc.) rather than any physiological changes in the vocal apparatus.
Key Words
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Article info
Publication history
Published online: March 05, 2023
Accepted:
January 12,
2023
Publication stage
In Press Corrected ProofFootnotes
Funding: No funding information to disclose.
Identification
Copyright
© 2023 The Voice Foundation. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
