PURPOSE: To describe the acoustic vocal modifications and the sensations occurred after the reverse phonation technique in young adult women without vocal complaints and with normal larynx. METHODS: Thirty-two young adult women were submitted to otorhinolaryngologic and speech-language pathology screening to discard possible alterations that could interfere with the results of the research; had vocal samples collected before and after carrying out three series of 15 repetitions of reverse phonation, in maximum time of phonation with the habitual tone and intensity, and 30 seconds of passive rest between series. After that, they answered a questionnaire regarding their sensations. Vocal acoustic analysis was carried out using the software Praat (version 4.6.10), and the data were analyzed using descriptive statistics and the Wilcoxon test, with a 5% level of significance. RESULTS: Statistically significant increase of the fundamental frequency and the maximum frequency; decrease of the minimum frequency; increase of the measures of Jitter, except for the local-absolute Jitter, which diminished; decrease of Shimmer, noise-to-harmonic ratio, and harmonic-to-noise ratio measures; and predominance of positive sensations. CONCLUSION: Reverse phonation promoted a positive effect over the vibration of the mucosa of the vocal folds and over their stretching. This result suggests an effect over the vocal muscles, favoring changes of fundamental frequency; and over the homogenization and modification of mucus layer. Moreover, it promoted a global improvement of the vocal signal and of the sensations during its production.
Phonation; Voice; Voice training; Voice quality; Voice disorders
