Voice Source and Vocal Fold Vibrations in Flow Phonation

Affiliation: Dept. of Speech & Hearing Sciences, Indiana University

Abstract:
Flow phonation is one of the approaches used in voice
rehabilitation/habilitation to reduce vibration dose and excessive
muscular effort. However there are limited investigations describing the
relationship between glottal airflow and endoscopically derived glottal
area measurements for flow phonation. The goal of this study was to
examine flow phonation characteristics with regard to vocal fold
vibration and voice source properties across two different vocal tract
lengths in vocally healthy adults using multimodality voice measurements
across various phonation modes (neutral, flow, pressed, and breathy).

Vocal fold vibration, airflow, acoustic, electroglottography and
subglottal pressure were simultaneously recorded in 12 untrained voices
(6 female and 6 male). Participants repeated the syllable /pae/ (1-2
per second) using breathy phonation, neutral phonation, flow phonation
and pressed phonation with neutral and loud voice. Glottal vibration was
captured by high-speed videoendoscopy; glottal flow was derived from
inverse filtering the airflow or the audio signal; and subglottal
pressure was measured as the intraoral pressure during /p/occlusion. The
inverse filtered flow signal, derived from a Rothenberg flow mask
attached to a Glottal Enterprises MSF-1 unit, was presented in real time
to the subjects as a visual feedback of phonation types.

Study findings and discussion will elucidate the gender differences
various vibrational characteristics that underlie different flow
glottogram parameters.