Is the perception of dysphonia severity language-dependent? A comparison of French and Italian voice assessments

Abstract

In this cross-language study, six Italian and six French voice experts evaluated perceptually the speech of 27 Italian and 40 French patients with dysphonia to determine if there were differences based on native language. French and Italian voice specialists agreed substantially in their evaluations of the overall grade of dysphonia and moderately concerning roughness and breathiness. No statistically significant effects were found related to the language of the speakers with the exception of breathiness, a finding that was interpreted as being due to different voice pathologies in the patient groups. It was concluded that the perception of the overall grade of dysphonia and breathiness is not language-dependent, whereas the significant difference in the perception of roughness may be related to a perception/adaption process.

Key words::

• Cross-language
• dysphonia
• perception
• voice quality

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank M.D. Guarella, C. Spezza, M. Puech, S. Cretani, T. Fuschini, V. Geminiani, and A. Zambarbieri for their participation in this study.

Declaration of interest: The authors report no conflicts of interest. This research was partially supported by COST Action 2103 ‘Advanced Voice Function Assessment’ and ANR BLAN08-0125 of the French National Research Agency.