Ratings of Manual Activity for two Forms of Alaryngeal Speech

Abstract

Seventy-eight judges rated the manual activity used by two laryngectomized patients to speak. One patient who underwent a surgical voice restoration procedure used a finger-to-stoma gesture. The other patient, a transcervical artificial larynx speaker, used an instrument-to-neck gesture. The results indicated that judges significally preferred the finger-to-stoma over the instrument-to-neck gesture on a 14-scale semantic differential. These results suggest that the gestures associated with the use of an artificial device may lead to adverse observer impressions when compared to another method of alaryngeal speech.