NORTHWEST VOICE

Financial Disclosure: Ms. Schenck has no financial relationships to disclose.

Non-Financial Disclosure: Ms. Schenck has no non-financial relationships to disclose.

ALEXANDRA SCHENCK, BM, MS, CF-SLP

Alexandra Schenck is the current speech-language pathology clinical fellow in the Department of Otolaryngology at the University of Washington Medical Center. She graduated with her Master's in Speech-Language Pathology at Northwestern University in 2020. Prior to this, Alex received her Bachelor of Music in Vocal Performance at the Bob Cole Conservatory of Music and her Artist Diploma in Operatic Performance at the Academy of Vocal Arts. She has performed at opera companies and music festivals across the country and internationally. Alex's research interests include voice and auditory feedback, vibrational therapies for voice, and efficacy of voice teletherapy.

Special Topics 2 - Effect of Pitch and Loudness Auditory Feedback perturbations on vocal quality during sustained phonation

In this study, we examined effects of both loudness- and pitch-altered auditory feedback to study the relationship between auditory feedback control and vocal quality as measured by smoothed cepstral peak prominence (CPPS). We applied 200 ms loudness-shifts (± 0, 3, or 6 dB) and pitch-shifts (± 0, 50, and 100 cents) to auditory feedback during sustained vowel production and measured CPPS before and after each shift. Results show that upward and downward shifts in loudness auditory feedback caused a relative increase in CPPS, indicating an improvement in vocal harmonicity, even in cases when vocal intensity was reduced. We propose that there may be a control mechanism for voice quality that increases harmonicity of the voice signal to improve voice audibility (ie, ability to be heard) in the presence of unpredictable variability in voice intensity.