title: Influence of Voice Focus on Oral-Nasal Balance in Speakers of Brazilian Portuguese.
abstract: This study investigates whether a change in speaking voice focus affects the oral-nasal balance. The investigation was undertaken with different phonetic materials in speakers of Brazilian Portuguese, which features phonological and phonetic vowel nasalization.
  
  
  
  Ten females read oral, balanced oral-nasal, and nasal loaded sentences in their normal voice, and with a backward focus and a forward focus. Nasalance scores were collected with a Nasometer 6400.
  
  
  
  A repeated measures ANOVA of the nasalance scores demonstrated a significant main effect of speaking condition (F(2, 18) = 12.87, p < 0.001). The mean nasalance scores across the stimuli in the backward focus and normal speaking conditions were 36.85% (SD 16.85) and 40.18% (SD 18.02), respectively, both significantly lower than the forward focus condition at 45.38% (SD 18.90).
  
  
  
  The results demonstrated that speaking focus influences oral-nasal balance in normal speakers. In future research, it should be investigated whether voice focus can also modify oral-nasal balance in hypernasal speakers with cleft palate and other disorders.
authors.affiliation: Department of Speech-Language Pathology, University of Toronto, Toronto, ON, Canada.
authors.forename: Gillian
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: de Boer
authors.forename: Viviane Cristina de Castro
authors.initials: VC
authors.lastname: Marino
authors.forename: Larissa Cristina
authors.initials: LC
authors.lastname: Berti
authors.forename: Eliana Maria Gradim
authors.initials: EM
authors.lastname: Fabron
authors.forename: Tim
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Bressmann
mesh_terms: D001938:Brazil; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D010700:Phonetics; D013061:Speech Acoustics; D013068:Speech Production Measurement; D014833:Voice Quality