Background: There is still no clear experimental data on the relationship between the intelligibility of Chinese vocal lyrics and different pitch.Aims/Objective: This study aims at investigating the intelligibility of Chinese sung words at different pitch.Material and methods: A word list is created and sung by eight singers at five different pitches (C5, F4, bB4, bE5, and bA5). The intelligibility of the words is tested by listeners with and without music background.Results: The average intelligibility score in the music-listeners is 84.9% (SD = 9.5%). The score at five pitches (from low to high) is 93%, 91.7%, 89.7%, 83.1%, and 67.1%, respectively. The average score is 77.4% (SD = 10.7%) in the non-music listeners. The average score is 87%, 86%, 79.8%, 76.8%, and 57.5% at five pitches, respectively. The ratio of unidentified sung words is 19.3% (SD, 4.3%) in female singers and 11.9% (SD = 1.5%) in male singers.Conclusions: The intelligibility of Chinese sung words declines gradually with increase in pitch, and the extent of decreases gradually elevating. Generally, the identified ratio of words sung by male singers is higher than that of female singers. The listeners who had no musical background have a lower intelligibility score than those with experience.

Despite the fact that perceptual evaluation of voice quality is considered as a gold standard for examining normal and pathological voice quality, the considerably high inter- and intralisteners variability still cannot be neglected. This is the result of a number of confounding factors such as listeners' perceptual bias, listeners' experience and type of rating scale being used. Currently, automatic objective assessment provides a very useful tool for diagnosis of pathological voices. Acoustic analysis can be a useful complementary tool for determining severity of dysphania. The present study aimed to develop a complementary automatic assessment system for voice quality by using multidimensional acoustical measures based on the well-known GRBAS scale. A total of 65 dimensionality measures including Mel-frequency Cepstral Coefficients, Glottal-to-Noise Excitation Ratio, Vocal Fold Excitation Ratio were constituted a set of features. Additionally, to reduce redundancy of providing features, three different feature extraction techniques were applied. The multiclass classification was done by means of RBF kernel-SVM. The classification results were moderately correlated with GRBAS ratings of severity, with the best accuracy around 70%. This suggests that such multidimensional acoustic analysis can be an appropriate assessment tool in determining the presence and severity of voice disorders.

Poster Presentation - Session: Learning, Education and Different Speech - no. Sun-P-7-3-3, paper ID 986

The present study investigated the voice quality associated with adductor spasmodic dysphonia by means of various acoustical measures. Energy distribution analyses and nonlinear dynamical measurements were used to depict the differences among voices associated with adductor spasmodic dysphonia (ADSD), vocal nodules (VN) and normal voices. Possible acoustical differences between voices associated with unilateral vocal fold paralysis (UVFP) and ADSD, UVFP and normal voice were investigated. Noise-to-harmonic ratio (NHR), harmonic-to-noise ratio (HNR), glottal-to-noise excitation (GNE), empirical mode decomposition excitation ratio (EMD-ER), nonlinear recurrence period density entropy (RPDE), detrended fluctuation analysis (DFA), correlation dimension (D2), and permutation entropy (PE) values were obtained from the sustained vowel /a/ produced by the subjects. Results revealed high specificity of these acoustic measures in distinguishing the voice quality of ADSD, VN, and UVFP voices from normal voices. In addition, combining GNE and D2 measures appears to be effective in distinguishing ADSD from normal and VN voices.

OBJECTIVE:Through exploring the concordance of objective multi-parameters analysis and perceptual evaluation, to establish an objective multi-parameters evaluation protocol of voice disorder and to make the evaluation of voice objectification and quantification.METHODS:Voice samples from 271 patients (124 female and 147 male)with dysphonia and 69 control subjects with normal voice (37 female and 32 male)were recorded and assessed by a jury composed of 5 experts in phoniatrics from different hospitals. The jury was instructed to classify voice samples according to the G (grade) component of the GRBAS scale on a visual analogue scale secondarily transformed in a 4-point scale ranging from 0 for normal to 3 for severe dysphonia. The voice samples were unified sentences and ordered randomly 3 times, the mean of 3 evaluation scores were the final results. The objective parameters, including fundamental frequency (F0), jitter, shimmer, fundamental frequency standard deviation (F0SD), normalized noise energy (NNE), harmonic-to-noise ratio (HNR) and maximal phonatory time (MPT), were measured on a 2-second sustained vowel/a/including its initial segment, using the software Dr. Speech for Windows. The data were analyzed using SPSS11.0.RESULTS:All objective parameters except for F0 had high correlation with G and the variance tendency of these parameters values was coherent with the extent of voice disorder. And there were statistical differences between adjacent voice disorder groups. Male and female objective multi-parameters protocols were established respectively consisting of jitter, shimmer, F0SD, NNE, HNR and MPT using discriminant analysis (P < 0.05). The concordance between perceptual evaluation and objective multi-parameters evaluation was 81.6% in male and 83.2% in female. The concordance of evaluation of normal voice and severe voice disorder groups were better than that of mild and moderate voice disorder groups. All mis-grading voices were judged in the adjacent voice group.CONCLUSIONS:The objective parameters of voice are able to reflect the characteristic of its perceptual evaluation and the concordance between perceptual evaluation and objective multi-parameters evaluation is good. The objective multi-parameters evaluation protocol we established could provide an objective and quantitative evaluation method for voice disorders.

OBJECTIVE To explore the factors that influence the stability of evaluation results judged by a jury through a standard research on perceptual evaluation measurements of voice quality. METHODS Voice samples from 300 patients with dysphonia and 100 control subjects with normal voice were recorded and assessed by a jury composed of 6 experienced listeners from different hospitals. The voice samples were discourse voices and ordered randomly 3 times, and the mean of 3 evaluations using visual analogue scale were the final results. The jury was instructed to classify voice samples according to the G (grade), R (rough) and B (breathy) components of the GRBAS scale on a 4-point scale ranging from 0 for normal to 3 for severe dysphonia. Κ value was used to analyze the concordance of evaluation results and regression analysis was used to research the effects of the extent of voice disorder to the stability of perceptual evaluation. RESULTS The discordance of evaluation existed both between the jury and in listeners themselves. The concordance of listeners themselves of each evaluation parameter was not bad, good, or even very good, and the concordance of evaluation of G was the best (κ value: 0.46 - 0.85), then R (κ value: 0.41 - 0.84) and B (κ value: 0.41 - 0.81). The concordance between the jury was worse than that in themselves. And except a listener whose concordance of evaluation was under the requirement, the concordance of evaluation of G was the best (κ value: 0.43 - 0.96), then R (κ value: 0.33 - 0.78) and B (κ value: 0.002 - 0.45). The stability of evaluation of normal voice and severe voice disorder was better than mild and moderate voice disorder. CONCLUSIONS The discordance between the jury was the main factor that influence the stability of perceptual evaluation. The evaluation parameters and extent of voice disorder will influence the stability of perceptual evaluation of the jury.

OBJECTIVETo investigate the risk factors that may relate with benign vocal fold lesions including vocal fold nodule, vocal fold polyp, chronic laryngitis and Reinke's edemaMETHODSIn present series, 321 cases who were performed laryngoscope were invited to participate the survey. Among them 168 cases with benign vocal fold lesions composed the case group. Another 153 cases with normal larynx composed the control group. Each case were undertook the same questionnaire. Logistic regression analysis was preformed to investigate the possible risk factors.RESULTSThe result demonstrated the occurring of benign vocal fold lesions positively correlated to five factors, including occupation, work or residence environment noise, alcohol-consuming, voice-using hours per day and abuse of voice. Occupations with intensive voice-use were more vulnerable to developing these disorders. Occurring risk of occupations type II with moderate voice-use was 1.934 times than that of occupations type I with lesser voice-use (OR = 1.934). And risk of occupations type III with upper voice-use was 2.633 times than that of type I. Risk raised 1.302 times with each more hour of voice use per day. OR of the following factors of voice abuse, environment noise, alcohol-consuming was 4.744, 2.115 and 2.177, respectively.CONCLUSIONSThe result suggested that people should abstain from alcohol, lowering the environment noise, prevent overuse and abuse of voice in order to decrease the prevalence of these disorders, which is especially important for the professional voice users, e. g. teachers or managers. The essential therapy for these disorders is to correct bad phonation habits.

随着社会的进步、生活水平的提高和社会交往的频繁,人们对如何保留和提高发声功能越来越重视。虽然嗓音疾病的诊断与治疗已经取得了相当的进步,但是还缺乏有效评价发声功能和嗓音障碍程度的方法,原因在于嗓音是一种复杂的多维现象,它既是一种在呼气流作用下的声带振动和产生声音的声学现象,又是一种主观心理听觉现象。因此,建立统一规范的嗓音障碍评估方法,是现代嗓音医学发展的必然要求。目前对嗓音障碍的评估主要依靠医生的主观判断、喉发声功能检查、嗓音的声学分析和患者的自我评估。

OBJECTIVE To evaluate the results of partial supracricoid laryngectomy with Tucker's reconstruction in T1b and T2 stages of glottic laryngocarcinoma. METHOD One hundred and thirty-nine patients received partial supracricoid laryngectomy with Tucker's reconstruction were analyzed, among them, 127 patients (T1b-48, T2-79) had never been treated, 12 patients with glottic cancer (Tr) recurred after radiotherapy or cordectomy. We calculate survival rate and evaluate the function of larynx according to the stage. RESULT For carcinology: 5-years survival rate for T1, T2 and Tr stages was 91%, 86% and 64% respectively; 5-years local control rate for T1, T2 and Tr stages was 100%, 94% and 82% respectively. With respect to the laryngeal function, the rate of decannulation is 100%, the average duration of decannulation is 10 days. The rate of the oblation of the naso-gastric tube is 99.3%. Six patients had accepted gastrotomy with difficulty during the deglutition of liquids; 1 patient had to have total laryngectomy because of incurable disorder of the deglutition. The time of the ablation of the naso-gastric tube is 15 days on average. One hundred and twenty-one patients (87%) presentented a satisfactory voice and only 18 patients have a medium voice quality. CONCLUSION Tucker technique is a reliable intervention on the carcinology and laryngeal function for the glottic lesions of T1b and T2.

OBJECTIVE:The purposes of this paper are to develop a multi-parametric protocol, which can evaluate the voice objectively and quantitatively,and to investigate its correlation with the perceptual analysis.METHOD:The voice samples were collected from 83 patients with dysphonia and 40 subjects with normal voices. All the subjects were women. The objective parameters, including fundamental frequency (F0), jitter, Shimmer, fundamental frequency standard deviation (F0SD), fundamental frequency tremor, amplitude tremor, normalized noise energy (NNE), harmonic-to-noise ratio(HNR), signal-to-noise ratio(SNR) and maximal phonatory time (MPT), which were measured mainly on a sustained vowel /a/, were recorded on a software named Dr. Speech for Windows. According to the G component of the GRBAS, the voice was graded from 0 for normal to 3 for severe dysphonia.RESULT:Using the discriminate analysis, a five parameters protocol (MPT, jitter, NNE, HNR and shimmer) was developed and it showed that this protocol allowed 79.8% concordance with jury classification.CONCLUSION:The voice objective analysis should be multi-parameters. Our multi-parameters evaluation protocol is able to reflect the result of perceptual analysis.