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Introduction: Childhood and adolescence are essential stages in the development of voice and speech quality; therefore, it is essential to understand the vocal changes that occur during this period. Frequency-based measurement methods like cepstral measurements stand out among the methods described, which are able to identify f o and estimate the periodicity and noise in the acoustic wave without establishing individual cycles of the sound wave., Methods: Two hundred seventy-one recordings (128 female and 131 male) from children and adolescents aged 5 to 18 years with no vocal complaints were analyzed. Three speech-language pathologists assessed the vocal quality and determined as appropriate for the age. The recordings were divided into six age groups (G1:5-7; G2:8-9; G3:10-11; G4:12; G5:13-15 and G6:16-18 years old). Sustained production of the vowel /a/ were inspected and edited using the PRAAT software. Then, it was extract de Cepstrum Peak Prominence Smoothed (CPPS) using a script in the same software. A Two-way ANOVA was applied to investigate the effect of sex, age and sex*age interaction, followed by Bonferroni's correction for each gender separately. Finally, the Student's t test for independent samples was performed to compare genders within each age group., Results: Male children and adolescents from G5 and G6 had higher CPPS measures than G1, G2 and G3 (P ≤ 0.001). In addition, G6 also had higher values than G4 (P ≤ 0.001). There was no difference between age groups in the female group. In turn, sex differences were reported from 12 years of age onwards, with higher CPPS values found for male participants compared to female participants (P ≤ 0.01)., Conclusion: Vocal changes that usually occur from childhood to adolescence are reflected in the acoustic CPPS measure in males, resulting in higher values in the 13 to 18 years old. On the other hand, no changes in CPPS values were observed in the age groups of female participants. Males have higher CPPS values than females and that sex differences are reported after 12 years of age., (Copyright © 2022 The Voice Foundation. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.)

Introduction: Diversifying voice therapy strategies is critical to get children and adolescents to adhere to the therapeutic process., Purpose: To investigate the face-to-face and distance playful strategies have been used for vocal health education and voice therapy in children and adolescents., Methods: An integrative literature review was carried out based on the recommendations of the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyzes (PRISMA). A search for full texts was conducted on the Virtual Health Library, Scientific Electronic Library Online (SCIELO) and PuBMed databases using the following descriptors, and their corresponding Medical Subject Headings (MeSH): voice (voz); voice quality (qualidade da voz); dysphonia (disfonia); voice disorders (distúrbios da fala); voice training (treinamento da voz); telemedicine (telemedicina); therapeutics (terapêutica); health promotion (promoção da saúde); group practice (prática de grupo); recreation therapy (terapia recreacional); child (criança); preschool (pré-escolar) and adolescent (adolescente)., Results: After full reading of the studies, 15 articles were included and categorized into the following topics: face-to-face and distance playful strategies for voice therapy in children; playful strategies with gamification for education and for voice therapy in children; and vocal health educational actions in children., Conclusion: The study found a higher number of studies that carried out educational actions and playful strategies, while fewer studies were related to the production of materials, gamification and online services for voice therapy in children. Given the proven benefits of this strategy for children, further studies focusing on the development and application of playful strategies, such as the use of gamification, should be conducted in order to stimulate the skills and adherence of this population to therapy., (Copyright © 2021 The Voice Foundation. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.)

Purpose: To compare the results of the non-linear acoustic analysis of elderly male and female voices, speakers of Brazilian Portuguese., Methods: Recordings of 14 men and 15 women were used. The voices were consensually judged to be vocally healthy by three trained speech therapists. The non-linear acoustic analysis was performed by the Phase Space Reconstruction (PSR) analysis using the Voice Analysis program., Results: A significant difference was observed in the parameter irregularity (p = 0.001) and spacing (p = 0.005), with worse results for the male group. While 93% of male voices presented degrees 2 or 3 of irregularity, these degrees were observed in 53% of female voices. In 78.6% of male voices, medium to large spacing was observed, a fact observed only in 26.7% of women., Conclusion: The results of the non-linear analysis, through the Phase Space Reconstruction, using the CIS Protocol, in the voices of the elderly, showed the best result in terms of the number of curves (four or more). Regarding the irregularity of the tracing, in men, the majority presented grades 2 and 3 and in women, half presented grade 1. Regarding the spacing, 78.6% of the male voices had medium to large spacing, a fact observed only in 26.7% of women.There was a difference between the sexes in the vocal findings of the elderly by the CIS protocol with the PSR, pointing out worse results irregularity and spacing in the male population, which suggests greater vocal aperiodicity in elderly men.

Purpose: To verify the relationship between obesity, voice and behavior in childhood and adolescence, through an integrative review., Methods: The researchers surveyed the articles indexed in the following databases: Embase, Web of Science, Scopus and Pubmed, using uniterms found in the Medical Subject Headings, related to the subject of the study, combined by the Boolean operators "and" and "or", published until January 2022. In the end, three reviewers selected the articles., Results: When searching for studies related to voice, obesity and behavior, 62 articles were found that did not meet the selection criteria and were excluded. Given this result, new searches were carried out with the following crossing strategies: voice and obesity and; Voice, Behavior and Child Behavior Checklist (CBCL). After the evaluation of the reviewers, two articles were selected referring to the intersection "voice and obesity in children and adolescents" and, two studies, in the intersection between "voice, behavior and CBCL". The first study on voice and obesity showed that the greater the abdominal circumference, the greater the maximum expiratory force and sound pressure found. The second study showed high Jitter and NHR values in obese children. Furthermore, studies on voice, behavior and CBCL showed that children with vocal nodules were more sociable than children without vocal nodules, and had behaviors described as "screams a lot" and "teases a lot". On the other hand, another study found potential risks of behavioral changes in the face of vocal complaints., Conclusions: Although this literature review did not find studies associating obesity with vocal and behavioral disorders, the literature found showed the presence of vocal alteration in some acoustic parameters in obese children. Regarding voice, behavior and CBCL, two studies were found reporting the presence of behavioral changes in children with voice-related complaints, according to the opinion of their parents., (Copyright © 2022 The Voice Foundation. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.)

Purpose: To analyze which method of judgment, auditory- perceptual (PAJ) of audios or perceptual-visual judgment (PVJ) (ultrasound images), is more sensitive to detect gradual productions between the class of deaf coronal fricatives and check if there is a correlation between these forms of judgment., Method: Audio and video files of language ultrasound (LUS) related to the production of the words "frog" and "key", of 11 children, between 6 and 12 years old, with atypical speech production, were selected from a bank data and edited for judgments. After instruction and prior training, 20 judges should choose, immediately upon presentation of the stimulus (auditory or visual), one of three options arranged on the computer screen. In PAJ the options were: correct, incorrect or gradient production, while in PVJ the options were images corresponding to the production of [s], [∫] or undifferentiated. The presentation time of the stimuli and the reaction time were automatically controlled by the PERCEVAL software., Results: PVJ provided a higher percentage of identification of gradient stimuli and a shorter reaction time in performing the task compared to PAJ, both statistically significant. Spearman's correlation test did not show statistical significance between PAJ and PVJ responses, nor for reaction time., Conclusion: PVJ using US images proved to be the most sensitive method for detecting gradient production in the production of fricatives [s] and [∫], and can be used as a complementary method to PAJ in speech analysis.

Purpose: To analyze the immediate effect of laryngeal surface hydration associated with the performance of Tongue Trills (TT) on singers., Methods: Thirty singers without vocal complaints or laryngeal alterations divided into control (CG) and experimental (EG) groups. The CG performed the TT for five minutes. The EG was submitted a nebulization with 3 ml of saline solution followed by TT for five minutes. Voice self-assessment, acoustic analysis and perceptual assessment were performed at Pre (Pre TT) and post (PTT) moments in CG and pre (Pre TT), post hydration (PH) and post hydration + TT (PHTT) in GE. In the self-assessment were evaluated quality, stability, vocal intensity and hoarseness. There were extract the values of the Fundamental frequency; Jitter%; Shimmer%, Noise-to-harmonic Ratio e Cepstral Peak Prominence-Smoothed (CPPs) in the acoustic analyze. The perceptual evaluation was performed by an experienced speech therapist., Results: Comparing the results of self-assessment between groups showed improvement in the perception of stability and vocal intensity in the PTT (CG) in relation to PH (EG). Comparison between the EG moments showed a statistical difference in the vocal intensity perception, indicating a better results for PHTT. There was no statistical difference between the groups investigated in the perceptual assessments and acoustic analysis., Conclusion: Surface laryngeal hydration does not potentiate the effect of TT on naturally hydrated singers with 3ml nebulization. For voice professionals with high vocal demand, surface hydration can be introduced during voice use to maintain vocal quality.

Purpose: To verify the effects of vocal warm-up (VWU) and vocal cool-down (VCD) strategies on teachers., Methods: A quasi-experimental exploratory blind-evaluator study with control group that included teachers from a public secondary school. Teachers assigned to the experimental group (EG) performed VW prior to classes and VCD after classes. Teachers in the control group (CG) did not perform VWU and simply got voice rest after classes. Intergroup (EG vs. CG) and intragroup (pre-test versus post-test) comparisons were drawn from an auditory-perceptual evaluation, acoustic analysis, and self-reported discomfort. The mean acoustic and discomfort indicators and the percentage of improvement or worsening of vocal quality were calculated with a statistically significance level of p<0.05., Results: EG and CG did not differ from each other in the intergroup analysis. The intragroup analysis showed that VWU improved voice quality and decreased the degree of body-related discomfort. VCD decreased both the fundamental frequency (f0) and the degree of discomfort, particularly in relation to the voice aspects. Vocal rest did not show any statistical difference., Conclusion: VWU showed positive effects on the auditory-perceptual evaluation and self-reported discomfort (body). VCD impacted f0 and self-reported discomfort (voice). Due to the exploratory nature of the research, the statistical power was not enough to demonstrate a difference in the comparison between EG and CG. However, the results indicate a potential for protecting teachers' voice and may be incorporated into daily work settings. Further controlled studies with random samples and greater numbers of participants should be conducted to confirm these results.

Objectives: This study establishes normative nasalance values for middle-aged and elderly Brazilian Portuguese-speakers and investigates age and gender effects across the life span., Methods: Nasalance scores were obtained from 62 middle-aged (45-59 years) and 60 elderly (60-79 years) participants with normal speech for 3 nonnasal, 1 phonetically balanced, and 2 nasal-loaded test sentences using the Nasometer II 6400. The data were combined with a published data set of 237 speakers in 4 groups: children (5-9 years), adolescents (10-19 years), young adults (20-24 years), and mature adults (25-35 years). A repeated-measures analysis of variance was used to investigate differences between the stimuli by gender and age groups., Results: There were statistically significant effects of stimulus, gender, and age group, as well as a stimulus-age group interaction effect and a gender-age group interaction effect. The females' mean nasalance scores were higher than those of the males. The mean nasalance scores for the child, adolescent, and young and mature adult speakers were significantly lower than those for the elderly speakers, and the children's scores were significantly lower than those of the middle-aged speakers., Conclusion: Higher nasalance scores among middle-aged and elderly speakers may indicate physiological changes affecting oral-nasal balance in speech across the life span., (© 2018 S. Karger AG, Basel.)