Is Cepstral Peak Prominence a Measure of Vocal Fatigue in Temple Priests: A Pilot Study

Mihidukulasooriya Shanilka Nirukshan Fernando; Ketaki Vasant Phadke

doi:10.1016/j.jvoice.2023.01.015

Is Cepstral Peak Prominence a Measure of Vocal Fatigue in Temple Priests: A Pilot Study

J Voice. 2023 Mar 5:S0892-1997(23)00013-9. doi: 10.1016/j.jvoice.2023.01.015. Online ahead of print.

Authors

Mihidukulasooriya Shanilka Nirukshan Fernando¹, Ketaki Vasant Phadke²

Affiliations

¹ Samvaad Institute of Speech and Hearing, Bangalore, Karnataka, India.
² Samvaad Institute of Speech and Hearing, Bangalore, Karnataka, India; The Voice Wellness Centre, a Unit of Macrocosmos Creations Private Limited, Bangalore, Karnataka, India. Electronic address: ketakislp@gmail.com.

PMID: 36882332
DOI: 10.1016/j.jvoice.2023.01.015

Abstract

Purpose: Considering cepstral analysis of voice as a measure of overall severity of dysphonia, we tried to investigate if these measures could be considered as a metric of vocal fatigue as well. Since voice quality changes are seen as a result of vocal fatigue, we wanted to find out if there were any correlations between the cepstral measures, vocal fatigue symptoms, and auditory perceptual evaluation of voice in professional voice users.

Method: The pilot study was conducted on 10 temple priests belonging to the Krishna Consciousness Movement. We conducted a pre-post voice evaluation, which included recording voices before the beginning of any temple preaching in the morning and after all the preaching sessions in the evening. The priests also filled in the Vocal Fatigue Index (VFI) questionnaire twice (morning and evening), and all the voice samples were analyzed for GRBAS (Grade, Roughness, Breathiness, Asthenia, and Strain voice quality) rating by speech language pathologists with voice expertise. Correlations were obtained between the acoustic measures, VFI responses, and auditory perceptual evaluations.

Result: The findings of our pilot study didn't show any correlations between the cepstral measures and the questionnaire responses or with the perceptual ratings. However, the cepstral measures were slightly higher for evening recordings than the morning recordings. Our participants did not experience or perceive any voice symptoms or vocal fatigue.

Conclusion: Despite more than 10 hours of voice use per day for over 10 years, our participants did not experience any voice symptoms or vocal fatigue. This finding indicates that there may be diverse reasonings and opinions about the occurrence of voice problems in various professional voice users. This is particularly because the participants' responses to vocal fatigue symptoms had more of a psychological explanation (faith, self-power, etc.) rather than any physiological changes in the vocal apparatus.

Keywords: Cepstral measures; Temple priests; Vocal Fatigue Index; Vocal fatigue.