Perceiving Physiology from the Voice: Evidence for Physiological Coupling Between Laryngeal and Epilaryngeal...

Behavioral voice therapy and voice training often rely on auditory perceptual prompts and oral sensations to communicate the intended voice production and voice quality. Due to the subjective nature, voice quality perception and sensations vary depending on listeners' experience and do not always allow precise communication of treatment plans and training goals in clinical voice care or voice training. A possible alternative is to describe voices using the underlying anatomical and physiological configurations that are used to produce them. This approach may provide a common, objective framework that allows precise communication of the target voice production and voice quality. The goal of this study is to evaluate how accurately laryngeal and epilaryngeal configurations can be perceived by listening to the voice in the framework of the Estill Voice Model. The results show that with training focused on both physiology and auditory perception of the voice, listeners are able to perceive laryngeal and epilaryngeal configurations with an accuracy much higher than the chance level. However, our results also show that some physiological combinations are more challenging to perceive than others, which implies either anatomical or physiological constraints or conflicting/redundant acoustic consequences.