Purpose
The purpose of this study was to determine the effect of cognitive load on relative fundamental frequency (RFF) in individuals with healthy voices.
Method
Twenty adults with healthy voices read sentences under different cognitive load conditions. Each sentence contained color terms printed in colored ink, creating an embedded Stroop task. Participants read the ink color in which a word was printed, rather than the color term itself. Sentences with mismatched ink colors and printed words constituted an increased cognitive load. RFF, an acoustic correlate of laryngeal tension, was calculated for the 10 voicing cycles preceding (i.e., offset) and following (i.e., onset) voiceless consonants. Repeated measures analyses of variance were constructed to assess the effects of RFF cycle, cognitive load, and their interaction on mean RFF offset and onset.
Results
There was a significant effect of cognitive load condition on RFF offset. There was no significant effect of condition on RFF onset nor significant interaction between cycle and condition on RFF onset or offset values.
Conclusion
Reduced mean RFF offset may indicate an increase in laryngeal muscle tension during a cognitively demanding task.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.