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Objectives: The purpose of the present study was to examine the nature of the relationship between perceptions of vocal and mental (cognitive) effort during reading and speaking tasks. Methods: One hundred and four young, healthy adult participants were randomized into one of three groups. Each group performed a writing task meant to elicit low mental effort, high mental effort, or high mental effort followed by a period of relaxation. Participants then engaged in reading and speaking tasks, meant to elicit high (suppression of a prepotent desire to speak louder) or low (no suppression of a prepotent desire to speak louder) mental effort, and completed ratings of mental effort and vocal effort via adapted versions of the Borg CR10. Results: Findings indicate that ratings of perceived mental and vocal effort are related to one another, evidenced by strong correlations, and additional analyses reveal that mental effort might drive this relationship. Conclusions: Perceptions of vocal effort appear to mirror ratings of mental effort during tasks for which vocal activity is relatively stable but cognitive demands fluctuate. The possibility that perceptions of mental effort might influence perceptions of vocal effort should be considered when creating reliable and valid measures of vocal effort as well as when interpreting currently adapted measures of vocal effort in the clinical context.

Vocal changes in emotional situations may identify contributing factors in behavioral voice disorders and direct more efficient therapies. Finding appropriate measures of voicing that detect emotional conditions is a first step in this line of investigation. The purpose of this study was to determine whether electroglottography (EGG) contact quotient is a viable measure to detect vocal changes in different emotion states. Vocal responses in 18 vocally healthy participants were measured using EGG contact quotient during picture viewing from the International Affective Picture System. Results demonstrated that in negative emotional conditions participants employed significantly greater EGG contact quotient than in neutral or positive conditions. EGG contact quotient appears to be a viable measure to investigate voice and emotion.