Keiko Ishikawa, Meredith Meyer, Joel MacAuslan, Suzanne Boyce
• Reduced intelligibility is a common complaint among people with dysphonia.
• Vowels carry information that greatly contributes to intelligibility.
• A formant is a cluster of frequencies amplified by the vocal tract. The first two formants are critical for perception of vowels.
• A greater amount of noise and a lack of harmonic power are common characteristics of dysphonic speech signals. These acoustic abnormalities can negatively affect perceptual resolution of formants.