Comparing ambulatory voice measures during daily life with brief laboratory assessments in speakers with and without vocal hyperfunction

The most common types of voice disorders are associated with hyperfunctional voice use in daily life. Although current clinical practice uses measures from brief laboratory recordings to assess vocal function, it is unclear how these relate to an individual's habitual voice use. The purpose of this study was to quantify the correlation and offset between voice features computed from laboratory and ambulatory recordings in speakers with and without vocal hyperfunction. Features derived from a neck-surface accelerometer included estimates of sound pressure level, fundamental frequency, cepstral peak prominence, and spectral tilt. Whereas some measures from laboratory recordings correlated significantly with those captured during daily life, only approximately 6-52% of the actual variance was accounted for. Thus, brief voice assessments are quite limited in the extent to which they can accurately characterize the daily voice use of speakers with and without vocal hyperfunction.