Vocal Loading - Effect of Speaking Environment

Effect of Speaking Environment

Several studies in vocal loading show that the speaking environment does have a significant impact on vocal loading. Still, the exact details are debated. Most scientists agree on the effect of the following environmental properties:

  • air humidity - dry air increases stress experienced in the vocal folds
  • hydration - dehydration increases effects of stress inflicted on the vocal folds
  • background noise - people tend to speak louder when background noise is present, even when it isn't necessary. Increasing speaking volume increases stress inflicted on the vocal folds
  • pitch - the "normal" speaking style has close to optimal pitch. Using a higher or lower pitch than normal will also increase stress in the speech organs.

In addition, smoking and other types of air pollution might have a negative effect on voice production organs.

Read more about this topic:  Vocal Loading

Famous quotes containing the words effect of, effect, speaking and/or environment:

    “The law before us, my lords, seems to be the effect of that practice of which it is intended likewise to be the cause, and to be dictated by the liquor of which it so effectually promotes the use; for surely it never before was conceived by any man entrusted with the administration of public affairs, to raise taxes by the destruction of the people.”
    —Philip Dormer Stanhope, 4th Earl Chesterfield (1694–1773)

    “Mix salt and sand, and it shall puzzle the wisest of men, with his mere natural appliances, to separate all the grains of sand from all the grains of salt; but a shower of rain will effect the same object in ten minutes.”
    —Thomas Henry Huxley (1825–95)

    “I have a talent for silence and brevity. I can keep silent when it seems best to do so, and when I speak I can, and do usually, quit when I am done. This talent, or these two talents, I have cultivated. Silence and concise, brief speaking have got me some laurels, and, I suspect, lost me some. No odds. Do what is natural to you, and you are sure to get all the recognition you are entitled to.”
    —Rutherford Birchard Hayes (1822–1893)

    “If the Revolution has the right to destroy bridges and art monuments whenever necessary, it will stop still less from laying its hand on any tendency in art which, no matter how great its achievement in form, threatens to disintegrate the revolutionary environment or to arouse the internal forces of the Revolution, that is, the proletariat, the peasantry and the intelligentsia, to a hostile opposition to one another. Our standard is, clearly, political, imperative and intolerant.”
    —Leon Trotsky (1879–1940)