What is it about?

People produce voice differently, but the differences may not be completely idiosyncratic. Chaos theory describes stable and context dependent patterns of performance that appear under certain internal conditions called “attractors.” This paper describes the importance of both individual differences and commonalities of the relationships of the 3 vocalization subsystems, and why Dynamic Systems Theory (Chaos Theory) may be a useful guide to our thinking about how the nonlinear patterns of the 3 subsystems emerge during voicing.

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Why is it important?

Understanding both individual differences and the determinants of how the 3 subsystems collect themselves under certain conditions helps make sense of the many possible degrees of freedom in which an individual may produce voice. Dynamic Systems Theory takes into account individual differences, but also helps catagorize individuals into smaller subgroups with some common behaviors. This may help better target therapy to individuals and is translational.

Perspectives

Complex systems are often non-linear and typical statistical analyses can fall short of describing meaningful behavior. We wanted to provide a theoretical background, Dynamic Systems Theory, which really comes from Chaos Theory that may better describe/explain the ways in which the 3 subsystems of voice emerge in real-time during voicing. From DST we hypothesized that there would not be infinite possibilities, but that behavior would tend to “suck in” to only a few common patterns in a given context. This helps explain what is happening physiologically and this may help treat voice problems.

Dan Croake
University of Kentucky

Read the Original

This page is a summary of: Vocalization Subsystem Responses to a Temporarily Induced Unilateral Vocal Fold Paralysis, Journal of Speech Language and Hearing Research, March 2018, American Speech-Language-Hearing Association (ASHA),
DOI: 10.1044/2017_jslhr-s-17-0227.
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