Relationship Between Masking Levels and Phonatory Stability in Normal-Speaking Women

Disruption of auditory feedback such as masking has been shown to influence vocal production. A reliable finding is an increase in intensity level; an increase in fundamental frequency (F0) is a less robust finding. Research is lacking concerning the effects of auditory masking on measures of phonatory stability such as jitter and harmonics-to-noise ratio (HNR). This study investigated changes in intensity, F0, jitter, and HNR in 22 normally speaking college aged women. Subjects produced the vowel /a/ under three conditions: no masking level (0-dB ML), 50-dB ML, and 80-dB ML. Significant differences between conditions emerged for intensity; means for the other measures were not significantly different. Intraindividual differences between conditions for each variable are discussed in the framework of auditory versus kinesthetic feedback.