The effect of levels and types of experience on judgment of synthesized voice quality.

Objectives/hypothesis: The purpose of this study was to determine the effect of level and type of experience on the judgment of voice quality and to examine the correlation among acoustical measurements and perceptions of voice quality.

Study Design: This was a within-subjects group design.

Methods: Speech-language pathologists, singing voice teachers (SVTs), speech-language pathology graduate students with and without experience with a voice client, graduate students who have completed a voice pedagogy course, and inexperienced listeners (IEs) rated stimuli with systematically altered measurements of jitter, shimmer, and noise-to-harmonics ratio (NHR) on a visual analog scale ranging from mild to severe for overall severity, roughness, breathiness, strain, and pitch.

Results: Results showed that the type of experience had an impact on judgments of voice quality more than the level of experience. Also, jitter/shimmer combination stimuli and shimmer only stimuli frequently correlated with the ratings of overall severity, roughness, and strain, and NHR stimuli correlated with ratings of breathiness across all groups. Only IEs, SVTs, and their students had significant correlations for ratings of pitch with jitter/shimmer combination stimuli having the highest correlations.

Conclusion: The conclusion was that the level and type of experience affect judgments of voice quality.