Empirical Evaluation of the Role of Vocal Fold Collision on Relative Fundamental Frequency in Voicing Offset

Relative fundamental frequency (RFF) is an acoustic measure of changes in fundamental frequency during voicing transitions. The physiological mechanisms underlying RFF remain unclear. Recent modeling suggests that changes in RFF during voicing offset are due to decreases in overall system stiffness as a direct result of the cessation of vocal fold collision. To evaluate this finding empirically, here we examined whether variable timing between the end of vocal fold collision and the final voicing cycle used to calculate RFF explained the variability in RFF across individual voicing offset utterances.

RFF during voicing offset was calculated from /ifi/ utterances produced by 35 participants under endoscopy, with and without vocal effort. RFF was calculated via two methods, in which utterances were aligned by (1) the end of vocal fold collision, or (2) the end of voicing. Analyses of variance were used to determine the effects of vocal effort and RFF method on the mean and standard deviation of RFF.

Aligning by vocal fold collision resulted in statistically significantly lower standard deviations. RFF means were statistically higher using the collision method; however, the degree of vocal effort was statistically significant regardless of the method.

These results provide empirical evidence to support that decreases in RFF during voicing offset are a result of decreases in system stiffness due to termination of vocal fold collision.