The effect of a 'voice course' on the voices of people with and without pathologies: Preliminary observations

Several institutions provide voice practice for their teaching staff. These 'voice courses' provide a unique treatment situation, in which some participants have a diagnosed laryngeal pathology, while others have no vocal complaints. Therefore, these voice courses can be viewed as group voice therapy as well as preventive voice treatment. The present study was aimed at providing a preliminary voice evaluation of participants in such a group, prior to and following treatment, using perceptual and acoustic analyses. Sixteen male teachers, who enrolled in a voice course, participated in eight consecutive sessions. Of this group, seven teachers were diagnosed with laryngeal pathologies, while the others had none. All participants were recorded before and after treatment. Recordings were analyzed acoustically, and also evaluated perceptually by ten experienced speech pathologists. Results indicated that: (i) voice quality improved after the voice course, (ii) vocal improvement was more pronounced in the pathological group than in the nonpathological group, and (iii) the acoustic analysis paradigm yielded results that were not always readily related with those of the perceptual paradigm.