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The perceptual structure of pathologic voice quality
1Division of Head and Neck Surgery, UCLA School of Medicine 90095-1794, USA.
The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America
|September 1, 1996
Summary
Standardizing voice quality perception is challenging due to listener variability. This study suggests analysis by synthesis may offer a better approach for understanding voice quality across different listeners.
Area of Science:
- Speech and Hearing Sciences
- Acoustic Phonetics
- Voice Disorders
Background:
- Perceptual assessment is crucial for evaluating pathologic voices.
- A standardized, valid set of voice quality scales is currently lacking.
- Standardization is vital for clinical acceptance and validating objective measures.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate the feasibility of standardizing perceptual voice quality assessment.
- To determine if a common perceptual space exists for voice quality judgments.
- To explore alternative methods for modeling voice quality.
Main Methods:
- Utilized large datasets (n=80) of male and female voices with diverse diagnoses and severities.
- Eight expert listeners judged the dissimilarity between voice pairs.
- Applied nonmetric individual differences multidimensional scaling to analyze listener responses.
Main Results:
- Significant differences in perceptual strategies among listeners were observed.
- The fundamental assumption of a shared perceptual space for voice quality is questioned.
- Listener variability challenges the standardization of perceptual voice quality labels.
Conclusions:
- Efforts to standardize perceptual labels for voice quality are unlikely to succeed due to listener differences.
- Analysis by synthesis presents a potential alternative for modeling voice quality.
- This approach could account for both voice characteristics and individual listener perception.