Paralysies récurrentielles et perturbation de l’intelligibilité de la parole et de la classification homme / femme
Recurrent nerve paralysis: speech intelligibility and gender identification perturbations

Summary/Abstract: The objective of this work is to evaluate the voice quality of patients who underwent thyroid surgery and to find out if listeners succeed in distinguishing between a man’s voice and a woman’s voice. The aim is also to evaluate the intelligibility of their voice. To answer these questions, 14 speakers (7 patients and 7 control subjects) were recorded while producing [iCa] sequences and sustained vowels. The recordings of patients took place in different phases: 15 days after surgery (post-op1), 1 month after (post-op2), etc. Two perceptual tests were then proposed to a jury consisting of 27 naïve listeners. They had (1) to identify the sex of the speaker and to assign a confidence score of 1 to 5 for three vowel productions of the vowel [a], by various speakers and at different recording phases (84 stimuli). Listeners also had to (2) identify the uttered nonsense word and assign to their response a confidence score going from 1 to 5. The chosen distinguishing criterion will be that of consonantal voicing, for 168 stimuli. The results of the sex identification of the speaker indicate that pathological speakers were correctly categorized. Confidence scores did not prove significant. Concerning the intelligibility of pathological speakers, an effect of recording phase has been shown for the identification of nonsense words, since nonsense words are best perceived by naïve listeners in the late recording stages. Confidence scores were not significant.

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