Immediate effects of vocal warm-up exercises on elementary teachers’ voice
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Date
2024-08-05
0000-0002-2843-9926 Journal Title
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Volume Title
Publisher
Brieflands
Abstract
Introduction: Teachers are a large group of professional voice users who are exposed to many voice problems. Vocal warm-up exercises (VWUE) can prepare the muscles involved in vocalization before teaching and can reduce voice damage in teachers. However, limited studies have examined the effects of VWUE on teachers;#39 voices. Therefore, the present study was conducted to investigate the immediate effects of VWUE on the acoustic and perceptual characteristics of the teachers;#39 voices.
Materials and Methods: The present study was a pretest-posttest within a group design study. A total of 20 teachers aged 18-45 with at least 5 years of teaching experience participated in the study and received VWUE for 30-45 minutes. VWUE included stretching the sternocleidomastoid, trapezius, and mylohyoid muscles, open-mouth, and yawn-sigh technique, glottal fry, tongue trills, resonance exercises, and performing ascending and descending tones. Outcome measurements included auditory-perceptual evaluation using CAPE-V and assessment of acoustic parameters with fundamental frequency, jitter, shimmer, and harmonic to noise ratio.
Results: After VWUE, a significant improvement was observed in acoustic parameters including decreasing jitter and shimmer and increasing the harmonic to noise ratio during the vowel /ɑ/ sustaining (P0.05). In addition, VWUE resulted in a statistically significant improvement and reduction in the overall severity of voice disorder during vowel sustaining and connected speech tasks (P