Vocal Pitch: Formidability

Vocal pitch is used as an important communicative device by humans, as found in the melodic dimension of both speech and song. Vocal pitch is determined by the degree of tension in the vocal folds of the larynx, which itself is influenced by complex and nonlinear interactions among the laryngeal muscles. The relationship between these muscles and vocal pitch has been described by a mathematical model in the form of a set of ‘control rules’. We searched for the biological implementation of these control rules in the larynx motor cortex of the human brain. We scanned choral singers with functional magnetic resonance imaging as they produced discrete pitches at four different levels across their vocal range. While the locations of the larynx motor activations varied across singers, the activation peaks for the four pitch levels were highly consistent within each individual singer. This result was corroborated using multi-voxel pattern analysis, which demonstrated an absence of patterned activations differentiating any pairing of pitch levels. The complex and nonlinear relationships between the multiple laryngeal muscles that control vocal pitch may obscure the neural encoding of vocal pitch in the brain.

By use of a rigid stereoendoscope system, the vocal fold length in living human subjects was measured in absolute values. The subjects were seven adults. None of them had special training for singing. The measurements were made during inspiration and phonation with systematic changes in vocal pitch. During respiration, the glottal width was widened in inspiration and narrowed in expiration. Following the widening of the glottis, the vocal fold length increased and following the narrowing of the glottis, it decreased. In steady phonation with systematic changes in vocal pitch, the minimum length of the vocal fold ranged from 5.6 to 9.8mm in males and from 6.0 to 7.3mm in females. The range of maximum length was from 10.7 to 15.0mm in males and from 9.2 to 12.6mm in females. In male subjects, the vocal fold length in usual spoken pitch (USP) ranged from 8.9 to 11.3mm. In the female subjects, it ranged from 7.0 to 10.1mm. It is noted that the subjects having a larger value of the vocal fold length in USP, also have larger value in the minimum and maximum length of the vocal fold. There was a general tendency for vocal fold length to increase with pitch ascent at least within some portion of the voice range of spoken voice. The rate of the elongation in relation to the pitch ascent appears to be variable among the subjects. It is also noted that the vocal fold length does not necessarily increase with the increase in vocal pitch in the higher portion of the voice range, including both natural and falsetto registers. In these pitch ranges, the physiological mechanisms for pitch control might not consistently be seen in the change of the vocal fold length. It seems that these variabilities of relation between the vocal pitch and the vocal fold length are evident in spoken voice, while uniform patterns are dominantly seen in singing voice, although further research is needed to support this notion.

Vocal communication (e.g., pitch) can shape inferences about speakers and the content of their messages. Yet, it’s unknown how such communication impacts the effectiveness of social support. We examined the role of support givers’ vocal pitch in three dyadic datasets (N1 = 39; N2 = 39; N3 = 59; friend pairs) where participants recorded scripted reappraisals (i.e., reinterpretations) of aversive stimuli to support a friend with regulating emotion. Using Bayesian statistics, we found cumulative evidence that when support givers used higher pitch in delivering these reappraisals, targets of support experienced less negative affect. Targets of support also reported greater relationship satisfaction with support givers who used higher pitch during reappraisal. These data consisted primarily of women friend pairs, with preliminary results indicating that these associations may not hold in men friendships. These results highlight acoustic features of verbal communication as a promising frontier for strengthening social ties and emotional wellbeing.

Background: Hyperacusis is the difference in dB between a normal threshold of audibility for a stimulus and the dB level at which that stimulus becomes intolerably loud. Some persons with autism exhibit symptoms of hyperacusis possibly attributable to phobias to auditory stimuli. Desensitization procedures have been used as a treatment for phobias and appear a promising treatment for patients with autism and hyperacusis. Methods: Our participant was a 26 year old male previously diagnosed Asperger's syndrome who presented with hyperacusis to low-pitched voices and a concomitant vocal disorder manifesting mainly as high vocal pitch. Despite not fully accepting treatment goals he agreed to treatment in our clinic. A systematic auditory desensitization program was employed to treat hyperacusis, including use of recorded male voices, musical instruments, and environmental sounds. In addition, a modified vocal re-education therapy program was also employed which included instruction on easy onset of phonation, biofeedback, ergonomic progressive imagery relaxation techniques and home exercises to reduce vocal hyperfunction and promote phonatorily efficient breath-stream management. Results: Initial, 7 month, and 13 month hyperacusis measures and voice evaluations were conducted. Hyperacusis evaluations showed our participant's hyperacusis for lower-frequency tones improved by up to 30 dB bilaterally and his hyperacusis for running speech improved 40 dB improved in the right ear and 35 dB in the left ear. His vocal pitch, measured as fundamental vocal frequency, improved from 404.471Hz to 280.78Hz. Conclusions: Our systematic auditory desensitization program decreased our participant's hyperacusis and our modified vocal re-education therapy (VRT) program lowered his vocal pitch. However, the results did not generalize beyond the clinic. The latter may be attributable to our participant's unwillingness to fully accept treatment goals, which may serve as a caveat to future clinicians to consider prognosis prior to making treatment decisions.

Recent evidence obtained from normal listeners, from neurological patients with focal cortical lesions, and from patients who have undergone surgical section of the corpus callosum suggests that the right hemisphere auditory system has an advantage over the left in the perception of complex pitch. A possible production correlate was studied in a patient with right hemisphere tumor in whom speech was monotonic. On binaural testing, both speech and complex pitch discrimination were intact. On dichotic testing, a significant impairment was observed on pitch, but not speech discrimination. Vocal pitch control was assessed by having the patient mimic the pitch of a binaurally presented token frequency. A range of 100 to 240 Hz was tested at 20-Hz intervals. The patient's production was limited to a range of approximately 24 Hz, centered around 140 Hz. The modulation of vocal pitch in the production of intonation contour may be one way in which right hemisphere mechanisms contribute to the production of speech. [Work supported by NIH grants NS03346-19 and RR05396-20.]

The role of auditory feedback during phonation: studies of Mandarin tone production

Precise vocal pitch regulation is crucial for both speech and song. The pitch of a speaker's voice can indicate the intent of a sentence, set the emotional context of a conversation, or distinguish meanings in tonal languages. In singing, accurate vocal pitch is the single most important element needed to properly produce notes and melodies. Vocal pitch regulation requires the integration of auditory feedback processing with the vocal motor system, also known as audio-vocal integration; however, the neural substrates governing this integration have been elusive. Recent functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) studies of singing with pitch-shifted feedback are presented here to outline the neural mechanisms of audio-vocal integration for voluntary vocal pitch regulation, and to discuss the effects of long-term vocal training on vocal performance and neural activity during vocal pitch regulation.

Vocal fold strain and vocal pitch in singing:Radiographic observations of singers and nonsingers

Remapping Auditory-Motor Representations in Voice Production

Candidates provide voters with both verbal and nonverbal information. Focusing specifically on the “voice” as nonverbal information, voters encounter candidates' voices through speeches, public debates, chanting, and even conversations with candidates, using these to form evaluations and determine their votes. This paper aims to clarify the impact of a candidate's vocal pitch on voters' voting choices through a quasi-experiment using merged data from candidate voice frequency measurements and a survey targeting general voters. Using candidates from the 2014 House of Representatives election as the analysis subjects, candidate voices were collected. A dataset was created by merging the measured frequencies from these voices with data from the survey indicating whether respondents voted for the respective candidate. Next, an analysis was conducted treating the data as a repeated-measures experiment within participants, where voting choices were made based on auditory stimuli with different conditions. This confirmed the effect of a candidate's “voice” on voters' voting choices. The analysis results show that, first, at the constituency level, a partial effect of lower-pitched voices promoting voting choice was observed. However, this effect was only confirmed in districts with female candidates—that is, in districts where the diversity of “voices” within the district, determined by the gender of the candidates, was greater—revealing that the effect was limited. Next, comparing the effect of party leaders at the national level with the effect of candidates at the district level, the effect of party leaders' lower voices promoting voting choices in proportional representation districts was consistent with previous research. However, it was also revealed that the effect of candidates remained limited. Furthermore, in the model incorporating party leader voices, the effect of candidate voices disappeared. This reveals that in single-member districts where party-focused tendencies grow stronger, the party leader factor becomes the basis for party judgment.

The literature on children's singing reveals that, for each age group, there are some children who cannot sing in tune. These children are labelled "poor pitch singers" (p.p.s.). The literature suggests that singing in tune is not simply a question of "can" or "cannot" but rather a continuum of skill with several degrees of competence. In general, the numbers of p.p.s. within sample populations declines with age, with boys outnumbering girls by 2 or 3 to 1. The customary method of treating this disability, although implying that improvement is possible, has only shown limited success. Reference to the psychological literature on feedback, however, suggests that, (1) learning can only take place when Knowledge of Results (KR) is present, and (2) variety of experience rather than repeated measures of the same kind may be more conducive to producing "novel" patterns of behaviour. Applying these findings to the mechanism of singing, a schema theory of how children learn to sing in tune is proposed, under which a recall and recognition schema are hypothesised as being responsible for vocal pitch production, and vocal pitch accuracy is determined by the efficiency of an error labelling schema.

The act of singing involves perceptual processing of pitch as well as vocal motor planning. One mechanism that may underlie this type of sensorimotor processing is auditory imagery. Prior research showed that less accurate singers, who report less vivid auditory imagery, engage in more preparatory subvocal movements than more accurate singers. The current research addressed the degree to which motor processing is causally involved in the preparatory auditory imagery that is associated with accurate vocal pitch matching. On each trial, participants were presented with a novel four-note target melody, then imagined the melody, and finally sang the melody aloud. During the auditory imagery period of the trials, participants either simply imagined the target melody (control) or imagined the melody while simultaneously engaged in one of the following secondary tasks: silently repeating the syllables /bɑtah/ (articulatory interference), continually droning a low quiet hum (phonatory interference), or exhaling continuously (phonatory suppression). Phonatory interference significantly disrupted vocal pitch matching relative to performance in the control task. Furthermore, the degree of phonatory disruption was related to participants' overall singing accuracy, such that less accurate singers were more disrupted by phonatory interference than more accurate singers. This suggests that less accurate singers rely on subvocalization to prepare for imitation, whereas more accurate singers may be able to rely on mental models of the actions needed to imitate pitch when subvocalization is prevented.

A total of 16 British fathers were audiotaped reading aloud to and conversing with their children aged 1 to 3 years (A‐C speech or ‘fatherese'), and with an adult (A‐A speech). Data concerning vocal pitch (indicated by fundamental frequency Fo) and rate of speech were extracted from the audiotapes of the fathers’ speech. It was found that fathers’ A‐C speech relative to their A‐A speech was characterised by significantly higher Fo mode in both discourse forms, and also by significantly higher Fo mean in conversational speech (only). The variability of Fo was not altered in fatherese speech, but the time taken to read aloud a written extract was significantly greater. Wide individual variation was evident in the extent of both the Fo and temporal modifications of fatherese speech. British fatherese speech was found to be characterised by a different combination of prosodic modifications when compared with British motherese speech.

Paralanguage refers to the nonverbal elements of speech – such as vocal pitch, intonation, and speaking tempo – that can be used to communicate attitudes, convey emotion, or modify meaning. In simple terms, paralanguage can be thought of as how something is said rather than what is said.

Voice production and regulation at the glottis requires a coordination of a number of factors. These include glottal air flow, subglottic air pressure, vocal-cord muscle contraction, acoustic coupling of the cavities above and below the glottis, etc. In order to explore this complex mechanism, a series of experiments were performed on anesthetized dogs producing phonation artificially by adducting and tensing the vocal cords via electrical stimulation of laryngeal motor nerves and controlled air blast to the subglottic area. Objective measurements of sound pressure, sound pitch, air flow, subglottic air pressure, and electrical stimuli were made simultaneously. Precise interrelationship among these parameters and efficiency for voice production induced from the parameters will be discussed. In particular, significance of the cricothyroid muscle on pitch and intensity regulation will be stressed.