The use of the Vocal Profile Analysis for speaker characterization: Methodological proposals

Abstract

Among phoneticians, the Vocal Profile Analysis (VPA) is one of the most widely used methods for the componential assessment of voice quality. Whether the ultimate goal of the VPA evaluation is the comparative description of languages or the characterization of an individual speaker, the VPA protocol shows great potential for different research areas of speech communication. However, its use is not without practical difficulties. Despite these, methodological studies aimed at explaining where, when and why issues arise during the perceptual assessment process are rare. In this paper we describe the methodological stages through which three analysts evaluated the voices of 99 Standard Southern British English male speakers, rated their voices using the VPA scheme, discussed inter-rater disagreements, and eventually produced an agreed version of VPA scores. These scores were then used to assess correlations between settings. We show that it is possible to reach a good degree of inter-rater agreement, provided that several calibration and training sessions are conducted. We further conclude that the perceptual assessment of voice quality using the VPA scheme is an essential tool in fields such as forensic phonetics but, foremost, that it can be adapted and modified to a range of research areas, and not necessarily limited to the evaluation of pathological voices in clinical settings.

The quantitative prevalence of creaky voice (vocal fry) in varieties of English: A systematic review of the literature

“…The studies that used auditory or auditory-visual methods and reported levels of inter-and intra-rater agreement (either formally or informally) reported that agreement was often high, but not complete [29,31,33,[36][37][38]. This is in line with evidence more generally of differences across and within listeners in the perceptual judgement of voice quality [20,46]. The use of automated acoustic methods for detecting creaky voice has potential to enable more replicable, larger-scale studies [5,47], but the acoustic complexity of creaky voice [17] means that the reliability of such methods needs close examination.…”

“…A summary of the ten studies' findings is shown in Fig 2. Note that the findings of Cantor-Cutiva, Bottalico and Hunter [38] (Fig 2; column 3) and most of Benoist-Lucy and Pillot-Loiseau's [32] findings (Fig 2; columns [16][17][19][20] are approximate representations of the studies' results. This is because the data was presented in the original papers in graphs from which only approximate values could be extracted by eye.…”

“…One alternative approach is to quantify the 'creakiness' of speakers' voices using ordinal perceptual scale (e.g. as [20] did for speakers of Standard Southern British English); another is to extract acoustic measures like spectral tilt, from which the degree of perceptual 'creakiness' (and 'breathiness') can be inferred (e.g. as [21] did for speakers of New Zealand English).…”

Using Crowd-Sourced Speech Data to Study Socially Constrained Variation in Nonmodal Phonation

“…Within British males, Henton and Bladon (1985) found that RP speakers creaked more than Northern British English speakers. More recently, San Segundo et al (2019) identified instances of creaky voice in “nearly all” of the 99 Standard Southern British English speakers they studied.…”

A Computer-Based Tool for the Assessment of Voice Quality Through Visual Analogue Scales: VAS-Simplified Vocal Profile Analysis

“…A recent study emphasizes the hybrid nature of VQ as the combination of longterm, quasipermanent laryngeal and supralaryngeal adjustments in a speaker's production, which are evaluated and classified by a listener through different perceptual processes. 3 The auditory-perceptual assessment of VQ is necessary in different areas of Applied Linguistics. For example, voice therapists are trained in the application of one or more protocols that describe a patient's VQ and help monitor its changes.…”