Auditory perception of voicing contrast in total laryngectomized speakers

ABSTRACT

Purpose  To evaluate the perception of voicing contrast in total laryngectomized speakers, tracheoesophageal speech users, in relation to the acoustic quality of alaryngeal phonation.

Method  Participants were 34 judges who evaluated audio recordings of three speakers with alaryngeal phonation - ALA (Superior phonation quality - ALAa; intermediate - ALAb and inferior - ALAc) and one with laryngeal phonation (LAR). The speech samples evaluated present pairs of words pata/bata; tata/data; cata/gata that were presented to the group of judges for auditory identification tasks.To assess intra-judge consistency, 10% of the sample stimuli were repeated in a randomized manner. The data were treated in order to generate confusion matrices and auditory similarity indices of the perception of the voiced and unvoiced plosive consonants of the 04 speakers. Of a total of 34 responses received, 21 had their responses validated, based on consistency criteria (50% of the repetitions presented).

Results  The ALAa and ALAb speakers received a similar pattern of responses, with higher rates of confusion of voiceless consonants being perceived as voiced, while the emissions from the ALAc speaker generated greater confusion in the perception of consonants both in the voicing and place of articulation features. The voiceless bilabial consonants produced by LAR speakers were the most perceptible.

Conclusion  The perception of voicing contrast in alaryngeal speakers was related to the acoustic quality of this phonation.

Conclusion

The perception of voicing contrast in alaryngeal speakers was related to the acoustic quality of this phonation.

Keywords:
Laryngectomy; Speech alaryngeal; Phonetics; Auditory perception; Voice