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Objective: The vibratory source for voicing in children with dysphonia is classified into three categories including a glottal vibratory source (GVS) observed in those with vocal lesions or hyperfunction; supraglottal vibratory sources (SGVS) observed secondary to laryngeal airway injuries, malformations, or reconstruction surgeries; and a combination of both glottal and supraglottal vibratory sources called mixed vibratory source (MVS). This study evaluated the effects of vibratory source on three primary dimensions of voice quality (breathiness, roughness, and strain) in children with GVS, SGVS, and MVS using single-variable matching tasks and computational measures obtained from bio-inspired auditory models., Methods: A total of 44 dysphonic voice samples from children aged 4-11 years were selected. Seven listeners rated breathiness, roughness, and strain of 1000-ms /ɑ/ samples using single-variable matching tasks. Computational estimates of pitch strength, amplitude modulation filterbank output, and sharpness were obtained through custom-designed MATLAB algorithms., Results: Perceived roughness and strain were significantly higher in children with SGVS and MVS compared to children with GVS. Among the computational measures, only the modulation filterbank output resulted in significant differences among vibratory sources; a posthoc test revealed that children with SGVS had greater amplitude modulation than children with GVS, as expected from their rougher voice quality., Conclusions: The results indicate that the output of an auditory amplitude modulation filterbank model may capture characteristics of SGVS that are strongly related to the rough voice quality., Competing Interests: Declaration of Competing Interest None., (Copyright © 2023 The Voice Foundation. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.)

The most common measurement tools used in the perceptual evaluation of voice quality yield ordinal data and thus do not support the establishment of mathematical relationships among different measurement values. This makes their interpretation challenging. Among the many desirable features of any psychophysical measurement tool is the ability to quantify the difference between two or more measurements and the ability to interpret the measurements in a manner that is related to the experience of the observer. The former allows one to compare among measurements using simple mathematics, while the latter allows that comparison to be interpreted in constructive ways. In this paper we describe the development of standard measurement scales for two dimensions of voice quality, following an approach that has been applied successfully to the perception of loudness. The scales follow step-by-step procedures used to develop the sone scale of loudness, which ties physical units to the perceptual estimates of loudness magnitude. Goals of the current work include development of analogous scales for the perception of breathy and rough voice qualities. First, the relationship between perceived voice quality and physical units were established using single-variable matching tasks. Second, the relationship between a change in physical units from the single-variable matching tasks and perceived voice quality magnitude were established using magnitude estimation tasks. Third, single reference points were identified on breathy and rough continuums. Finally, all points on the newly established voice quality continuums were rescaled relative to these arbitrary reference points. The proposed breathiness and roughness scales result in ratio-level data with standard measurement units that support quantitative comparisons of perceptual judgments. Such judgments can be used, for example, to compare magnitude of change pre- and post-treatment., (Copyright © 2020 The Voice Foundation. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.)

Objective: Classifying dysphonic voices as type 1, 2, and 3 signals based on their periodicity enables researchers to determine the validity of acoustic measures derived from them. Existing methods of signal typing are commonly performed by listening to the voice sample and visualizing them on narrow-band spectrograms that require training, time, and are subjective in nature. The current study investigated pitch-based metrics (pitch height and pitch strength) as correlates to characterizing voice signal types. The computational estimates were validated with perceptual judgments of pitch height and pitch strength., Methods: Pitch height and pitch strength were estimated from Auditory-Sawtooth Waveform Inspired Pitch Estimator Prime algorithm for 30 dysphonic voice segments (10 per type). Ten listeners evaluated pitch height through a single-variable matching task and pitch strength through an anchored magnitude estimation task. One way analyses of variance were used to determine the effects of signal type on pitch height and pitch strength estimates. Relationship between computational and perceptual estimates was evaluated using correlation coefficients and their significance., Results: There was a significant difference between signal types in both computational and perceptual pitch strength estimates. Periodic type 1 signals had greater pitch strength compared to type 2 and 3 signals. Auditory-Sawtooth Waveform Inspired Pitch Estimator Prime produced robust computational estimates of pitch height even in type 3 signals when compared to other acoustic software. Listeners were able to reliably judge pitch height in type 2 and 3 signals despite their lack of a clear fundamental frequency., Conclusions: Pitch height and pitch strength can be measured in all dysphonic voices irrespective of signal periodicity., (Copyright © 2019. Published by Elsevier Inc.)

Background: A limited number of experiments have investigated the perception of strain compared to the voice qualities of breathiness and roughness despite its widespread occurrence in patients who have hyperfunctional voice disorders, adductor spasmodic dysphonia, and vocal fold paralysis among others., Objective: The purpose of this study is to determine the perceptual basis of strain through identification and exploration of acoustic and psychoacoustic measures., Methods: Twelve listeners evaluated the degree of strain for 28 dysphonic phonation samples on a five-point rating scale task. Computational estimates based on cepstrum, sharpness, and spectral moments (linear and transformed with auditory processing front-end) were correlated to the perceptual ratings., Results: Perceived strain was strongly correlated with cepstral peak prominence, sharpness, and a subset of the spectral metrics. Spectral energy distribution measures from the output of an auditory processing front-end (ie, excitation pattern and specific loudness pattern) accounted for 77-79% of the model variance for strained voices in combination with the cepstral measure., Conclusions: Modeling the perception of strain using an auditory front-end prior to acoustic analysis provides better characterization of the perceptual ratings of strain, similar to our prior work on breathiness and roughness. Results also provide evidence that the sharpness model of Fastl and Zwicker (2007) is one of the strong predictors of strain perception., (Copyright © 2018 The Voice Foundation. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.)

Objectives: This study aims to determine the sensitivity of perceptual and computational correlates of breathy and rough voice quality (VQ) across multiple vowel categories using single-variable matching tasks (SVMTs)., Methods: Sustained phonations of /a/, /i/, and /u/ from 20 dysphonic talkers (10 with primarily breathy voices and 10 with primarily rough voices) were selected from the University of Florida Dysphonic Voice Database. For primarily breathy voices, perceived breathiness was judged, and for primarily rough voices, perceived roughness was judged by the same group of 10 listeners using an SVMT with five replicates per condition. Measures of pitch strength, cepstral peak, and autocorrelation peak were applied to models of the perceptual data., Results: Intra- and inter-rater reliability were high for both the breathiness and the roughness perceptual tasks. For breathiness judgments, the effect of vowel was small. Averaged over all talkers and listeners, breathiness judgments for /a/, /i/, and /u/ were -11.6, -11.2, and -12.2 dB noise-to-signal ratio, respectively. For roughness judgments, the effect of vowel was larger. The perceived roughness of /a/ was higher than /i/ or /u/ by 3 dB modulation depth. Pitch strength was the most accurate predictor of breathiness matching (r 2  = 0.84-0.94 across vowels), and log-transformed autocorrelation peak was the most accurate predictor of roughness matching (r 2  = 0.59-0.83 across vowels)., Conclusions: Breathiness is more consistently represented across vowels for dysphonic voices than roughness. This work represents a critical step in advancing studies of voice quality perception from single vowels to running speech., (Copyright © 2018 The Voice Foundation. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.)

Background: The perception of pediatric voice quality has been investigated using clinical protocols developed for adult voices and acoustic analyses designed to identify important physical parameters associated with normal and dysphonic pediatric voices. Laboratory investigations of adult dysphonia have included sophisticated methods, including a psychoacoustic approach that involves a single-variable matching task (SVMT), characterized by high inter- and intra-listener reliability, and analyses that include bio-inspired models of auditory perception that have provided valuable information regarding adult voice quality., Objectives: To establish the utility of a psychoacoustic approach to the investigation of voice quality perception in the context of pediatric voices?, Methods: Six listeners judged the breathiness of 20 synthetic vowel stimuli using an SVMT. To support comparisons with previous data, stimuli were modeled after four pediatric speakers and synthesized using Klatt with five parameter settings that influence the perception of breathiness. The population average breathiness judgments were modeled with acoustic measures of loudness ratio, pitch strength, and cepstral peak., Results: Listeners reliably judged the perceived breathiness of pediatric voices, as with previous investigations of breathiness in adult dysphonic voices. Breathiness judgments were accurately modeled by loudness ratio (r 2  = 0.93), pitch strength (r 2  = 0.91), and cepstral peak (r 2  = 0.82). Model accuracy was not affected significantly by including stimulus fundamental frequency and was slightly higher for pediatric than for adult voices., Conclusions: The SVMT proved robust for pediatric voices spanning a wide range of breathiness. The data indicate that this is a promising approach for future investigation of pediatric voice quality., (Copyright © 2019 The Voice Foundation. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.)

Background: The characteristic voice quality of a speaker conveys important linguistic, paralinguistic, and vocal health-related information. Pitch strength refers to the salience of pitch sensation in a sound and was recently reported to be strongly correlated with the magnitude of perceived breathiness based on a small number of voice stimuli., Objective: The current study examined the relationship between perceptual judgments of breathiness and computational estimates of pitch strength based on the Aud-SWIPE (P-NP) algorithm for a large number of voice stimuli (330 synthetic and 57 natural)., Methods and Results: Similar to the earlier study, the current results confirm a strong relationship between estimated pitch strength and listener judgments of breathiness such that low pitch-strength values are associated with voices that have high perceived breathiness. Based on this result, a model was developed for the perception of breathy voice quality using a pitch-strength estimator. Regression functions derived between the pitch-strength estimates and perceptual judgments of breathiness obtained from matching task revealed a linear relationship for a subset of the natural stimuli. We then used this function to obtain predicted breathiness values for the synthetic and the remaining natural stimuli., Conclusions: Predicted breathiness values from our model were highly correlated with the perceptual data for both types of stimuli. Systematic differences between the breathiness of natural and synthetic stimuli are discussed., (Copyright © 2016 The Voice Foundation. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.)

Experiments to study voice quality have typically used rating scales or direct magnitude estimation to obtain listener judgments. Unfortunately, the data obtained using these tasks are context dependent, which makes it difficult to compare perceptual judgments of voice quality across experiments. The present experiment describes a simple matching task to quantify voice quality. The data obtained through this task were compared to perceptual judgments obtained using rating scale and direct magnitude estimation tasks to determine whether the three tasks provide equivalent perceptual distances across stimuli. Ten synthetic vowel continua that varied in terms of their aspiration noise were evaluated for breathiness using each of the three tasks. Linear and nonlinear regressions were used to compare the perceptual distances between stimuli obtained through each technique. Results show that the perceptual distances estimated from matching and direct magnitude estimation task are similar, but both differ from the rating scale task, suggesting that the matching task provides perceptual distances with ratio-level measurement properties. The matching task is advantageous for measurement of vocal quality because it provides reliable measurement with ratio-level scale properties. It allows the use of a fixed reference signal for all comparisons, thus allowing researchers to directly compare findings across different experiments., (Copyright (c) 2010 The Voice Foundation. All rights reserved.)