Voicing and silence periods in daily and weekly vocalizations of teachers

Abstract

The National Center for Voice and Speech (NCVS) data bank on voice dosimetry was used to study the distributions of continuous voicing periods and silence periods in 31 teachers over the duration of two weeks. Recordings were made during all awake hours of the day. Voicing periods were grouped into half decades, ranging from 0.0316to0.10s for the shortest periods of phonation to 31.6–100s for the longest periods of phonation. Silence periods were grouped into similar half decades, but ranged up to periods of several hours. On average, the teachers had 1800 occurrences of voicing (onset followed by offset) per hour at work and 1200 occurrences per hour while not at work. Voicing occurred 23% of the total time at work, dropping to 13% during off-work hours and 12% on weekends. The greatest accumulation of voicing occurred in the 0.316–1.0s voicing periods, whereas the greatest accumulation of silence occurred in the 3–10s silence periods. The study begins to lay the groundwork for understanding vocal fatigue in terms of repetitive motion and collision of tissue, as well as recovery from such mechanical stress.