The effect of musical background on judgments of dysphonia

The objectives of this study were to determine the effect of musical background on both pitch discrimination abilities and the reliability of judging voice quality in dysphonic speakers, and to determine the relationship between pitch discrimination abilities and the reliability of voice quality judgments. Twenty musicians and 20 nonmusicians performed pitch discrimination tests. They also made judgments of dysphonic vowels and speech samples for breathiness and roughness using 100-mm visual analog scales. Musicians demonstrated significantly smaller pitch discrimination thresholds than nonmusicians. For measures of intrarater agreement, musicians were significantly more consistent than nonmusicians for judgments of breathiness in both vowels and speech produced by dysphonic speakers. Musicians also showed significantly better interrater agreement for judgments of breathiness in vowels. Weak to moderate relationships were found between pitch discrimination abilities and agreement values for voice quality judgments. Results suggest that musical background may affect a listener's reliability in making judgments of dysphonia, particularly for judgments of breathiness. However, simple pitch discrimination skills of pure tones do not explain these differences. More complex stimuli should be used in future investigations to help determine the nature of underlying differences.