Abstract:
According to a previous investigation of children's voices, hoarseness is a stable concept with three main predictors: hyperfunction, breathiness, and roughness [McAllister et al., J. Voice 8(3), 230--239 (1994)]. The present investigation analyzes the relation between various acoustic measures and these perceptual voice characteristics, complemented by instability and gratings. The analysis was carried out on a material of vowels sustained by 50 ten-year-old children representing different degrees of hoarseness. The acoustic measures were a frequency perturbation quotient, an amplitude perturbation quotient, and two versions of a harmonics-to-noise measure as proposed by Kasuya et al. [J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 80, 1329--1334 (1986)]. Highly significant correlations were found between hoarseness, breathiness, and roughness, on the one hand, and frequency perturbation quotient as well as one of the harmonics-to-noise measures, on the other.