Interobserver agreement of perceived intelligibility of magnitude of r in children.

This study was designed to test whether independent listeners could correctly classify 162 stimuli (words) that started with a multiple trill, magnitude of r, followed by a vowel magnitude of a. The sounds were from 27 Spanish children between the ages of 3.0 and 6.6 years, pronouncing Spanish words current in their vocabulary. Twelve listeners were presented with the recordings of the children's magnitude of r production and were instructed to rate the intelligibility of the pronounced sound as high, medium, or low. Inter-rater agreement ranged from 85 to 96%. Analyses of variance for each of the three production categories showed that there were significant differences, so it seems possible to classify the words starting with a trilled magnitude of r based on auditory-perceptual features into three broad categories according to intelligibility.

The long-term average spectrum as a measure of voice stability.

This paper aims at providing a methodological answer to the topic of voice stability. Seventeen experimental subjects read a standard text 5 times during a 2-week period. The data were obtained through the Long-Term Average Spectrum and were analyzed with a twofold procedure: (i) analysis of the absolute energy values at different frequency points throughout the length of the spectrum, and (ii) analysis of the relative values obtained by subtraction of each of two consecutive frequency values analyzed. The results obtained with the first procedure indicate that the differences that exist between the various sessions are centered mainly in the frequencies below 0.6 kHz and in the area of 4 kHz, following a linear tendency. The fact that the differences between sessions disappear when employing relative measures may indicate that the utilization of these measures eliminates the sources of systematic or aleatoric error can be introduced during a recording or in the period of time between two consecutive recording sessions.

High-frequency components of normal and dysphonic voices.

The analysis of high-frequency energy levels can presently be considered as being more influenced by the characteristics of the speaker than by the phonetic material, serving as an indicator of the quality of the voice. In this study the energy levels in the frequency intervals of 6-10 and 10-16 kHz were evaluated, both in dysphonic voices and in subjects with no voice problems. The material consisted of consonant-vowel syllables formed by stop phonemes and the basic Spanish vowels, analyzing the vocal segment. The results indicate that the energy, found from the power spectrum average, in both frequency areas, is significantly bigger in the group with dysphonic voices. The analysis in the 10-16 kHz regions shows additional significant differences of energy between the vowels, progressively decreasing from front to back vowels.