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Significant Changes of Voice Characteristics
Speaking behavior and voice sound characteristics typically show "natural"
fluctuations over time due to the test persons’ interactions with
the immediate environment. Occasionally one can observe significant long-term
changes of a few days or even weeks caused by mental health problems or adverse
reactions to chronic stress. The line between "natural fluctuations" and
"significant changes" essentially depends on spoken language, gender, age, as
well as type of speech, such as automatic speech ("counting"), emotionally
neutral, or emotionally charged speech.
Normative Data of 613 Healthy Volunteers
In order to decide on the significance of changes we relied on normative data
from repeated assessments on 613 healthy subjects stratified according to (1) gender
and age: age range 18-65 years; (2) the "stress-timed" languages English and German;
and (3) the "syllable-timed" languages French, Italian, and Spanish. All test
persons contributed 2 repeated speech recordings at 14 day intervals encompassing
3 different types of text. This approach allowed us to analyse the stability and
natural variability of the major voice parameters as well as their sensitivity to
form and content of spoken text. Thus, we were able to determine boundaries for the
"natural fluctuations" of voice characteristics as a function of gender, age, and
spoken language.
Threshold Values from Psychiatric Patients
These normative data from healthy subjects were complemented by threshold values
from psychiatric patients under treatment with a clinical diagnosis of major
depression, schizophrenia, or bipolar disorder (n=598).
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Stability of voice parameters "mean vocal pitch" and "6db-bandwidth" as a
function of time (healthy volunteers): the first assessment is plotted along the
x-axis and the second assessment 14 days later along the y-axis.
While mean vocal pitch displays a high stability over time, the voice parameter
"6db-bandwidth" (measuring intonation) is much less stable. The experimental condition
is "counting/frehand speech".
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