PubMed Health⌕ Search

Biomedical subjects

F Consoli

Publications and source records attributed to F Consoli.

5 recordsLinked to original sources

[Correlations between vocal qualities and mental retardation].

This research is intended to verify the existence of vocal spectrographic alterations, with particular reference to the values of Fundamental Frequency, in patients with different levels of Mental Retardation. The results show the existence of a direct correspondence between the values of the Fundamental Frequency and the level of Mental Retardation: the spectrographic characteristics appear to be more altered in subjects with severe Mental Retardation. The spectrographics patterns are characterized by the presence of bi-phonation particularly at the onset time and at the end, and by a noise signal on constant frequency. The shifts of Fundamental Frequency and voice breakage are rarely detected.

Adolescent↗

[The senile voice].

Involutive processes which characterize aging induce substantial morphological and functional alteration in the pneumo-phono-articulatory system and thus bring about numerous effects on vocal quality. Fundamental frequency (Fo) variation, whose values increase in males and decrease in females, are found in voice patterns. Moreover, in literature many authors have described vocal substain intensity and timbre deficit in the elderly. Vocal emission of elderly people can become so peculiar that it may be possible to identify approximately the age and the sex of the speaker by merely hearing the voice. The aim of this work was to identify specific parameters of the senile voice using spectroacoustic digital analysis. The following points were considered in this study: the psychoacoustic perceptive evaluation of vocal samples in subjects of different ages in order to identify the sex and age of the speaker; the spectroacoustic digital analysis of the same vocal samples; the morphofunctional observation of the phono-articulatory apparatus. Our results confirmed the presence of peculiar electroacoustic characteristics in the senile voice (mean pitch value variation in males and in females, vocal substain deficit, decrease in vocal intensity, senile tremolo, cycle-to-cycle alteration of Fo and mean amplitude) due to morphofunctional changes of the pneumo-phono-articulatory system. In all the subjects we observed anatomo-functional changes at the glottic level. The presence of specific vocal patterns and the quality of speech play an important role in the processes of senile voice identification.

Aged↗