Invariance in pitch perception

Information in speech and music is often conveyed through changes in fundamental frequency (f0), the perceptual correlate of which is known as "pitch". One challenge of extracting this information is that such sounds can also vary in their spectral content due to the filtering imposed by a vocal tract or instrument body. Pitch is envisioned as invariant to spectral shape, potentially providing a solution to this challenge, but the extent and nature of this invariance remain poorly understood. We examined the extent to which human pitch judgments are invariant to spectral differences between natural sounds. Listeners performed up/down and interval discrimination tasks with spoken vowels, instrument notes, or synthetic tones, synthesized to be either harmonic or inharmonic (lacking a well-defined f0). Listeners were worse at discriminating pitch across different vowel and instrument sounds compared to when vowels/instruments were the same, being biased by differences in the spectral centroids of the sounds being compared. However, there was no interaction between this effect and that of inharmonicity. In addition, this bias decreased when sounds were separated by short delays. This finding suggests that the representation of a sound's pitch is itself unbiased, but that pitch comparisons between sounds are influenced by changes in timbre, the effect of which weakens over time. Pitch representations thus appears to be relatively invariant to spectral shape. But relative pitch judgments are not, even when spectral shape variation is naturalistic, and when such judgments are based on representations of the f0.

Vokaltraktbeschwerden und Gesundheitserleben von Pflegenden in Senioreneinrichtungen in der Pandemie

ZusammenfassungDie SARS-CoV-2-Pandemie bedeutet für Berufstätige im Gesundheitswesen eine besondere Belastung in mehreren Bereichen, u.a. durch das Tragen einer Mund-Nasen-Bedeckung und damit veränderter Kommunikation. In einer prospektiven Studie wurde die Belastung des Vokaltrakts und das psychisch-körperliche Wohlbefinden hier am Beispiel von Tätigen in der Altenpflege mittels Fragebogen erfasst. Methoden In 2 Altenpflegeeinrichtungen wurden die standardisierten Fragebogen Symptom-Checkliste 90 in der Kurzversion (Mini-SCL) und die Vocal Tract Discomfort Scale (VTDS) in deutscher Übersetzung eingesetzt, kombiniert mit Fragen zu Alter, Komorbidität, Stimme und bereits erfolgter SARS-CoV-2-Infektion. Ergebnis Bei einer Rückmeldung von 67 von 100 ausgeteilten Fragebogen zeigten sich bei den teilnehmenden Mitarbeitern (56 Frauen und 11 Männer, 45,2 ± 11,5 Jahre alt) erhöhte Werte für beide Fragebogen. Im Mini-SCL wiesen in der Skala Depressivität 23,8% erhöhte Werte auf, in der Skala Ängstlichkeit 49,3%, in der Skala Somatisierung 55,2% und in der Gesamtskala 44,7%. Bei 52% der Teilnehmer ergaben sich erhöhte Werte im VTDS. Zwischen dem VTDS und den Einzelskalen des Mini-SCL sowie zu Stimmbeschwerden bestand jeweils ein signifikanter Zusammenhang. Diskussion In der Altenpflege Tätige leiden während der Pandemie vermehrt unter psychischen und physischen Beschwerden. Es bestehen Zusammenhänge zwischen Missempfindungen im Vokaltrakt und Stimmsymptomen sowie dem emotionalen und körperlichen Wohlbefinden. Stimmhygienische Schulungen können bei den aktuell erhöhten kommunikativen Anforderungen hilfreich sein.

Psychometric Characteristics of Different Versions of Vocal Tract Discomfort (VTD) Scale: A Systematic Review

Background: This review compare different Vocal Tract Discomfort (VTD) versions. This comparison is based on their validity and reliability parameters in the translation and adaptation process. We aimed to prepare numerical evidence to prove the validity of this easy screening tool. VTD is able to perform an accurate diagnosis of voice discomforts, particularly in primary stages. Methods: Articles were selected from databases including Google Scholar, PubMed, Science Direct and Scopus. Our relevant papers were gathered by searching the phrase: VTD in titles, abstracts, and keys. Studies not followed an adaptive procedure were excluded. Based on the selection criteria, out of 23 collected articles, eight were studied in this review. Results: Standard psychometric protocol steps were followed in all selected articles and simultaneously high reliability and validity were reported in their translation procedure. Such analogous results may confirm the efficacy of this research tool. Conclusion: This review affirms VTD, perceptual patient-based scale, as a valuable evaluation tool to investigate the occurrence of voice disorders. Based on its structure and performance, VTD can work as a quick and precise source for predicting vocal discomforts. Moreover, this capability can help professional therapists to plan more efficient treatment procedures. The other important advantage of VTD is its diagnostic and prognostic capacity to inform patients about their current and future conditions so that they would be motivated to follow treatment procedures more consistently.

Acoustic characteristics of voice and speech in Arabic-speaking stuttering children

Background Using different methodologies, several researchers have reported certain acoustical and physiological differences between fluent utterances of stutterers and normally fluent speakers. The aim of this study was to determine acoustic characteristics of voice and speech in Arabic-speaking stuttering children in comparison to normal children and correlate these characteristics with stuttering severity. A sample of 80 Arabic-speaking Egyptian children (including 40 typically developing children and 40 stuttering children) in the age range 5–8 years were subjected to acoustic analysis of voice and speech using the Praat software. Results The stuttering children showed significantly higher values of jitter and shimmer in prolonged /a/ vowel sample, as compared to the normal group. This may reflect the subtle differences in laryngeal functioning or in the complex interaction among the laryngeal, respiratory, and the vocal tract systems in stuttering children. Both jitter and shimmer of prolonged /a/ vowel demonstrated significant positive moderate correlation with stuttering severity as assessed by SSI3. F0 was significantly higher in females than in males, both in normal and stuttering children. Conclusions The present study revealed significant differences in the acoustic parameters of voice and speech between Arabic-speaking stuttering children and normal children. Some of these acoustic parameters were significantly correlated with stuttering severity. Acoustic analysis can be used as simple, quick, and cheap tool for assessment of stuttering in children and might be a valuable addition to the diagnostic set for assessment of stuttering severity.

Static and dynamic formant scaling conveys body size and aggression

When producing intimidating aggressive vocalizations, humans and other animals often extend their vocal tracts to lower their voice resonance frequencies (formants) and thus sound big. Is acoustic size exaggeration more effective when the vocal tract is extended before, or during, the vocalization, and how do listeners interpret within-call changes in apparent vocal tract length? We compared perceptual effects of static and dynamic formant scaling in aggressive human speech and nonverbal vocalizations. Acoustic manipulations corresponded to elongating or shortening the vocal tract either around (Experiment 1) or from (Experiment 2) its resting position. Gradual formant scaling that preserved average frequencies conveyed the impression of smaller size and greater aggression, regardless of the direction of change. Vocal tract shortening from the original length conveyed smaller size and less aggression, whereas vocal tract elongation conveyed larger size and more aggression, and these effects were stronger for static than for dynamic scaling. Listeners familiarized with the speaker's natural voice were less often ‘fooled’ by formant manipulations when judging speaker size, but paid more attention to formants when judging aggressive intent. Thus, within-call vocal tract scaling conveys emotion, but a better way to sound large and intimidating is to keep the vocal tract consistently extended.

Vocal Fold Vibration Characteristics during SOVTE using a Vibration Simulator and Digital Kymography

Objectives: The purpose of this study is to investigate the characteristics of vocal fold vibration during sustained vowel /a/ phonation and various semi-occluded vocal tract exercise (SOVTEs) using a vibration simulator and digital kymography (DKG).Methods: A total of 12 normal young speakers (6 males, 6 females) aged 20-30 years participated in the study. They phonated a sustained /a/ vowel and performed SOVTE. The vocal fold vibration characteristics were measured according to the number of vibration sources (single vs. double), and vocal tract occlusion degree using a vibration simulator and DKG. Glottal gap quotient (GQ, %), speed quotient (SQ, %) and amplitude (pixel) were estimated quantitatively from the DKG image.Results: The results showed that significantly higher GQ (p = .000) and SQ (p = .000) were observed in the humming and bilabial fricative /β/ compared to open vowels. The amplitude was significantly higher in the open vowel /a/ than in humming (p = .018) and bilabial fricative /β/ (p = .003). Also, when comparing the vocal fold vibration parameters according to vibration type (single source: straw phonation vs. double source: straw phonation with water), the double source presented a significantly higher GQ (p = .000) as well as SQ (p = .008) in comparison with a single source.Conclusion: SOVTE showed a glottal gap that is different from the opened vowel /a/. It also had a longer opening of the vocal fold and a smaller amplitude than the vowel. This suggests that SOVTE may be helpful for facilitating vocal fold vibration and good voice quality in clinical practice. The current study can be meaningful in providing theoretical and clinical evidence for SOVTE.

Spectral-Warping Based Noise-Robust Enhanced Children ASR System

In real-life applications, noise originating from different sound sources modifies the characteristics of an input signal which affects the development of an enhanced ASR system. This contamination degrades the quality and comprehension of speech variables while impacting the performance of human-machine communication systems. This paper aims to minimise noise challenges by using a robust feature extraction methodology through introduction of an optimised filtering technique. Initially, the evaluations for enhancing input signals are constructed by using state transformation matrix and minimising a mean square error based upon the linear time variance techniques of Kalman and Adaptive Wiener Filtering. Consequently, Mel-frequency cepstral coefficients (MFCC), Linear Predictive Cepstral Coefficient (LPCC), RelAtive SpecTrAl-Perceptual Linear Prediction (RASTA-PLP) and Gammatone Frequency cepstral coefficient (GFCC) based feature extraction methods have been synthesised with their comparable efficiency in order to derive the adequate characteristics of a signal. It also handle the large-scale training complexities lies among the training and testing dataset. Consequently, the acoustic mismatch and linguistic complexity of large-scale variations lies within small set of speakers have been handle by utilising the Vocal Tract Length Normalization (VTLN) based warping of the test utterances. Furthermore, the spectral warping approach has been used by time reversing the samples inside a frame and passing them into the filter network corresponding to each frame. Finally, the overall Relative Improvement (RI) of 16.13% on 5-way perturbed spectral warped based noise augmented dataset through Wiener Filtering in comparison to other systems respectively.

Potential link between playing wind instruments and vocal tract disorders. A literature review

Introduction and purpose: Currently, we can distinguish three basic groups of instruments. These are wind instruments, percussion instruments, and plucked instruments. In the case of wind instruments, the source of sound is a vibrating column of air, which is created by blowing by the player. It is suspected that such vibration may cause specific vocal and laryngeal symptoms. The aim of the study was to present the current state of knowledge regarding the potential relation between playing wind instruments and vocal tract disorders. Material and methods: The article reviews 19 publications available on the PubMed and Google Scholar, Web of Science databases meeting assumed criteria: published as a full text, without time limit and conducted on humans. The studies were found using initially established searching strategies as well as subsequent manual searching in order not to miss adequate articles. State of knowledge: Laryngeal symptoms may be combined with vocal symptoms. The main raised vocal manifestations among instrumentalists are dysphonia, hoarseness, and altered voice quality. Comparing a group that used wind instruments with control, VHI-10 (Voice Handicap Index) and F0 (fundamental frequency) and HNR (harmonics-to-noise ratio) were higher while jitter % and shimmer %, which are perturbation parameters, were lower in the study group. The majority of studies has a limitation because they were performed in a limited number of volunteers. Conclusions: The symptoms of the vocal tract related to playing wind instruments are characterized by a low frequency of occurrence and intensity. However, further research is needed to assess this relation.

Vocal tract physiology and its MRI evaluation

Introduction. The rapid technological evolution in Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) has recently offered a great opportunity for the analysis of voice production. Objectives. This article is aimed to describe main physiological principles at the base of voice production (in particular of vocal tract), and an overview about literature on MRI of the vocal tract. This is presented in order to analyze both present results and future perspectives. Method. A narrative review was performed by searching the MeSH terms “vocal tract” and “MRI” in PubMed database. Then, the obtained studies were subsequently selected by relevancy. Results. Main fields described in literature concern technical feasibility and optimization of MRI sequences, modifications of vocal tract in vowel or articulatory phonetics, modifications of vocal tract in singing, 3D reproduction of vocal tract and segmentation, and describing vocal tract in pathological conditions. Conclusions. MRI is potentially the best method to study the vocal tract physiology during voice production. Most recent studies have achieved good results in representation of changes in the vocal tract during emission of vowels and singing. Further developments in MR technique are necessary to allow an equally detailed study of faster movements that participate in the articulation of speaking, which will allow fascinating perspectives in clinical use.