Cepstral and Perceptual Investigations in Female Teachers With Functionally Healthy Voice

What is it about?

The present study aimed at measuring the smoothed and non-smoothed cepstral peak prominence (CPPS and CPP) in teachers who considered themselves to have normal voice but some of them had laryngeal pathology. CPP, CPPS and SPL values were extracted using Praat software for all three voice samples. Sound samples were also perceptually evaluated by five voice experts for overall voice quality (10 point scale from poor to excellent) and vocal firmness (10 point scale from breathy to pressed, with normal in the middle).ResultsThe CPP, CPPS and SPL values were significantly higher for vowels than for comfortable speech and for loud speech compared to comfortable speech (P < 0.001). Significant correlations were found between SPL and cepstral measures. The loud speech was perceived to be firmer and have a better voice quality than comfortable speech. No significant relationships of the laryngeal pathology status with cepstral values, perceptual ratings, or voice SPLs were found (P > 0.05).ConclusionNeither the acoustic measures (CPP, CPPS, and SPL) nor the perceptual evaluations could clearly distinguish teachers with laryngeal changes from laryngeally healthy teachers. Considering no vocal complaints of the subjects, the data could be considered representative of teachers with functionally healthy voice.

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Why is it important?

The smoothed and non-smoothed cepstral peak prominence (CPPS and CPP) have been recognized as objective measures of voice quality. Bad voices should have lower CPP and CPPS values than good voices. This study investigated whether the CPP and CPPS values can help detecting pathology of the voice organ at the stage when the voice worsening is not yet self-perceived by the speaker. The results show that this is not the case. The CPP and CPPS measures thus could be seen to be similarly sensitive as the subjective perception of the speaker.

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