title: Relationship between masking levels and phonatory stability in normal-speaking women.
abstract: Disruption of auditory feedback such as masking has been shown to influence vocal production. A reliable finding is an increase in intensity level; an increase in fundamental frequency (F0) is a less robust finding. Research is lacking concerning the effects of auditory masking on measures of phonatory stability such as jitter and harmonics-to-noise ratio (HNR). This study investigated changes in intensity, F0, jitter, and HNR in 22 normally speaking college aged women. Subjects produced the vowel /a/ under three conditions: no masking level (0-dB ML), 50-dB ML, and 80-dB ML. Significant differences between conditions emerged for intensity; means for the other measures were not significantly different. Intraindividual differences between conditions for each variable are discussed in the framework of auditory versus kinesthetic feedback.
authors.affiliation: Department of Speech-Language-Hearing Sciences, Hofstra University, Hempstead, New York 11549, USA. sphctf@hofstra.edu
authors.forename: Carole T
authors.initials: CT
authors.lastname: Ferrand
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008144:Loudness Perception / Q000502:physiology; D015999:Multivariate Analysis; D009622:Noise; D010470:Perceptual Masking / Q000502:physiology*; D010699:Phonation / Q000502:physiology*; D010700:Phonetics; D013061:Speech Acoustics; D013068:Speech Production Measurement; D014833:Voice Quality