ABSTRACT
Purpose
Compare the auditory perceptions of students, teachers and naive people regarding the voice, in elementary school teaching.
Methods
It is a cross-sectional study composed by three groups of 104 students, 40 teachers and 40 non-teachers. The object of the research was a 14-voice bank, composed by the voice of an actress. The participants pointed out which voices they would choose for an elementary school teacher, indicating if the voices were pleasant, motivating and able to arouse attention.
Results
The preferred voices were of neutral vocal quality (95.1%), bass pitch (75%) and slow speed (67.9%), considered pleasant, motivating and able to arouse attention. The less chosen voices were the moderate breathy (98.4%), intense breathy (97.3%), mild rough (94.6%), moderate rough (94.0%), intense rough (94.6%) and with imprecise speech articulation (94.0%), all of them with negative vocal psychodynamic. Proportionally, the bass voice was the most chosen by teachers (95%). The slow speed, strong intensity and mild breathy voices were more marked by naive people (90%, 52.5%, 37.5%) and the students reported less the mild rough (1.9%) and moderate rough (1.9%) ones.
Conclusion
Voices of neutral vocal quality, of bass pitch and with slow speech speed are the preferred ones for a teacher of elementary school, considered pleasant, motivating and able to arouse attention. The voices with imprecise speech articulation, moderate and intense rough and breathy are not well accepted and the psychodynamic is negative. Teachers appreciate more the bass pitch; naive people, the slow speech speed, mild breathy and strong intensity; and students evaluate negatively the rough voices.
Keywords:
Voice; Teachers; Dysphonia; Voice quality; Auditory perception; Speech-language pathology