Lip Contact Pressure While Talking in Background Noise

Abstract

Loudness manipulation is an important clinical tool in reducing functional communication limitations and increasing speaking participation in individuals with dysarthria. Increasing loudness appears to influence all domains of the speech production system (i.e., respiratory, laryngeal, and orofacial), resulting in increased effort and coordination. The purpose of the present study was to investigate the influence speaking under different levels of background noise has on lip contact pressure, a measure of physiological effort, during bilabial consonant production. Ten young adults ranging in age from 20 to 24 years read 30 sentences under three different levels of multitalker babble background noise (0, 40, & 80 dBHL). An Entran Pressure Transducer was used to acquire lip contact pressure for words containing the bilabial consonants /p/, /b/, and /m/. Intensity of the voice significantly increased across noise conditions; however, static and dynamic measures of articulatory contact pressures (ACP) were not significantly influenced by background noise. Increase in physiological effort as represented by ACP appears not be related to increasing intensity while speaking in background noise. Additional study of the factors influencing different aspects of articulatory contact pressure is recommended for individuals with and without motor speech disorders.