Background Although mobile health (mHealth) tools for vocal health are increasingly used, their scientific evaluation remains limited.Objectives To assess the perceived usability and usefulness of the Vocal'iz mobile application among teachers. To examine the relationships between these outcomes and individual factors such as age, Voice Handicap Index (VHI-30), health literacy, and digital literacy.Method Thirty teachers participated in the three phases of our study: (1) completion of a personal data questionnaire, the VHI-30, the Health Literacy Scale, and the Digital Literacy Scale; (2) 10 days of independent use of the application; and (3) completion of the System Usability Scale (SUS) and section F of the Mobile App Rating Scale (MARS) to assess the app's usability and perceived usefulness. A one-sample t-test compared the participants' SUS score to the reference value of 70. A Wilcoxon signed-rank test compared the MARS section F score to the reference value of 3. Correlation tests were conducted between the SUS and MARS scores and the individual factors.Results The mean SUS score (76.67, SD = 11.55) and the mean score for MARS section F (4.03, SD = 0.74) were both significantly higher than the reference values, with medium to large effect sizes. There were no significant correlations between usability or usefulness and the individual factors.Conclusions The findings suggest that teachers rated the Vocal'iz app highly, demonstrating its good usability and positive perceived usefulness. The app's potential as a preventive tool warrants further evaluation in more diverse and larger populations, as well as an assessment of its effectiveness.
PURPOSE:To describe and compare acoustic-prosodic measures derived from reading aloud and spontaneous speech, analysed jointly, in older adults with and without Parkinson's disease (PD), using speech data collected through mobile phone recordings in both in-person and remote conditions. PARTICIPANTS AND METHODS:The study sample comprised 39 older adults (19 males and 20 females), aged 60-93 years, including individuals with PD at different clinical stages and neurologically healthy controls. Twenty-four acoustic-prosodic features related to fundamental frequency (fo), intensity, voice quality, and pause were semi-automatically extracted using Praat's Prosody Descriptor Extractor from 821 reading and spontaneous speech samples collected between 2020 and 2024. Effect sizes guided sex-based group comparisons. RESULTS:Key differences between controls and individuals with PD were found in speech rate (large effect), and in articulation rate, coefficient of variation for intensity (cvint), spectral emphasis (emph; an acoustic correlate of vocal effort), shimmer, and standard deviation of fo (fosd) (moderate effects). These showed consistent, sex-specific PD-related changes: slower rates, reduced fosd, increased cvint, and altered shimmer. CONCLUSION:Among the twenty-four acoustic-prosodic parameters analysed, temporal measures, particularly speech and articulation rates, showed the largest effect sizes and most consistently differentiated older adults with and without PD. Cvint, shimmer, and fosd contributed at a secondary level, with relative relevance varying according to PD severity. Overall, alterations in speech timing constitute the primary acoustic dimension distinguishing PD-related speech changes from age-related effects in this dataset, supporting the descriptive relevance of speech-based acoustic-prosodic analyses obtained from mobile phone recordings in non-invasive research settings.
Introduction: A series of recent studies using the Public Opinion Survey of Human Attributes-Stuttering (POSHA-S) have documented an extreme case of regression to the mean (RTM) or a "crossover" effect in public attitudes toward stuttering. Respondents were previously sorted according to changes in their attitudes. The "crossover" effect revealed that respondents with the highest pre-test scores had the lowest post-test scores, those with the lowest pre-test scores had the highest post-test scores, and those with intermediate scores changed minimally. Method: In this study, RTM was evaluated in four different measures from two USA samples: Bipolar Adjective Scale (BAS), Emotional Intelligence Scale (EIS), Attitudes Toward Disabled Persons (ATDP) scale, and Metacognitive Awareness Inventory (MAI). Results: The "crossover" effect was observed in three of these scales as well as in one of two POSHA-S scores. Due to lower-than-expected test-retest correlations, correction for regression to the mean diminished or eliminated the "crossover" effect in some of the measures. Conclusions: Overall, the study showed that the "crossover" effect can be observed in widely different pre- versus post-test measures.
