Towards Standardizing Perceptual Voice Quality Measures

对嗓音质量的判断在很大程度上有助于患者对他们的声音的看法，并有助于临床医生的决定 开始并继续治疗。质量判断也被用作一种标准，相对于 对语音测量进行了验证。然而，这些“主观”的声音质量衡量标准并不高。 被认为是临床或研究工具，因为可靠性和未经测试的有效性问题。我们 假设语音质量测量中的问题不是源于收听者，而是源于 来自用于测量听众听到的内容的方法。这项拟议的研究与传统的 应用语音合成器对病态嗓音质量进行评分的方法研究基本问题 关于语音质量测量的可靠性和有效性，并确定 音质感知的声学要素。在这种方法中，听众调整合成器 参数以实现与原始语音的感知匹配。这种调整技术的方法 明确地将声学信号与语音质量联系起来。我们假设整个语音链上的这种联系 通过为听众提供以下内容，提高最终感知响应的有效性、可靠性和实用性 用来量化他们听到的东西的客观工具(合成器)。拟议的研究集中在四个方面 明确的目标。首先，我们将扩展、改进和自动化我们的合成器，以增加功率、灵活性和 易于使用。其次，我们将应用合成器来检查几个键的知觉重要性 病理性声音的各个方面，包括声源频谱的形状、周期倍增和 声源中的谐波和非谐波(噪声)能量的感知相互作用。在每种情况下，我们都会 确定哪些声学特征在感知上很重要，以及这些特征是否与 其他参数，我们将估计参数的显著差异，作为 在这个维度上具有临床意义的声学变化。第三，我们将评估临床医生的能力 将该合成器作为临床上测量语音质量的工具。我们还将重新讨论如何使用 合成锚在评级协议中作为调整任务的替代方法。最后，我们会 通过比较从以下来源得出的感知测量来评估合成技术的外部有效性 从连续发音派生出来的元音。通过增加的功能和易用性 合成器的使用，测试听者对重要声学变量的敏感性，并研究 这种方法的通用性，所提出的研究将为我们带来标准化语音质量的目标 评估方案触手可及。

Judgments of voice quality contribute greatly to patients' opinions of their voice, and to a clinician's decision to initiate and continue treatment. Quality judgments are also used as a standard against which instrumental measures of voice are validated. Nevertheless, these "subjective" measures of voice quality are not highly regarded as either clinical or research tools, because of problems with reliability and untested validity. We hypothesize that problems in voice quality measurement do not originate within the listener, but rather derive from the methods used to measure what listeners hear. The proposed research departs from traditional rating scale methods by applying a speech synthesizer for pathological voice quality to study basic issues concerning reliability and validity of voice quality measures, and to determine the perceptual importance of the acoustic elements that underlie voice quality perception. In this approach, listeners adjust synthesizer parameters to achieve a perceptual match to the original voice. This method of adjustment technique explicitly links the acoustic signal to voice quality. We hypothesize that this linkage across the speech chain increases the validity, reliability, and utility of the resulting perceptual responses, by providing listeners with an objective tool (a synthesizer) for quantifying what they hear. The proposed research focuses on four specific aims. First, we will expand, refine, and automate our synthesizer, to increase power, flexibility, and ease of use. Secondly, we will apply the synthesizer to examine the perceptual importance of several key aspects of pathologic voices, including the shape of the source spectrum, period doubling, and the perceptual interactions of harmonic and inharmonic (noise) energy in the voice source. In each case, we will determine which acoustic features are perceptually important and whether these features interact with others, and we will estimate just-noticeable-differences for the parameter as an index of the amount of acoustic change that is clinically meaningful on that dimension. Thirdly, we will evaluate clinicians' ability to apply the synthesizer as a tool for measuring voice quality in the clinic. We will also revisit the use of synthetic anchors in rating protocols as an alternative to the method of adjustment task. Finally, we will evaluate the external validity of the synthesis technique by comparing perceptual measures derived from sustained vowels to those derived from continuous speech. By increasing the power and ease of the synthesizer's use, examining listener sensitivity to important acoustic variables, and studying the generalizability of this approach, the proposed research will bring our goal of a standardized voice quality evaluation protocol within reach.