Voice quality of psychological origin

Variations in voice quality are essentially related to modifications of the glottal source parameters, such as: F0, jitter, and shimmer. Voice quality is affected by prosody, emotional state, and vocal pathologies. Psychogenic vocal pathology is particularly interesting. In the present case study, the speaker naturally presented a ventricular band voice whereas in a controlled production he was able to use a more normal phonation process. A small corpus was recorded which included sustained vowels and short sentences in both registers. A normal speaker was also recorded in similar tasks. Annotation and extraction of parameters were made using Praat's voice report function. Application of the Hoarseness Diagram to sustained productions situates this case in the pseudo-glottic phonation region. Analysis of several different parameters related to F0, jitter, shimmer, and harmonicity revealed that the speaker with psychogenic voice was capable of controlling certain parameters (e.g. F0 maximum) but was unable to correct others such as shimmer.