Immediate effects of vocal warm-up exercises on elementary teachers’ voice

authors:

avatar Banafshe Mansuri ORCID , avatar Seyed Abolfazl Tohidast ORCID , * , avatar Mozhgan Asadi ORCID , avatar Elmira Shokri , avatar shamim ghazi ORCID

Koomesh: Vol.24, issue 4; 477-483
published online: August 02, 2022
article type: Research Article
received: June 08, 2021
accepted: November 02, 2021

how to cite: Mansuri B, Tohidast S A, Asadi M, Shokri E, ghazi S. Immediate effects of vocal warm-up exercises on elementary teachers’ voice. koomesh. 2022;24(4):e152756. 

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

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