A nonrandomized trial for student teachers (Grillo, 2021)

Purpose: This study investigated the effects of the in-person and telepractice Global Voice Prevention and Therapy Model (GVPTM) treatment conditions and a control condition with vocally healthy student teachers.

Method: In this single-blinded, nonrandomized trial, 82 participants completed all aspects of the study. Estill Voice Training was used as the stimulability component of the GVPTM to train multiple new voices meeting all the vocal needs of the student teachers. Outcomes were assessed using acoustic, perceptual, and aerodynamic measures captured by the VoiceEvalU8 app at pre and post in fall and during student teaching in spring.

Results: Significant improvements were achieved for several acoustic and perceptual measures in the treatment conditions, but not in the control condition. The in-person and telepractice conditions produced similar results. The all-voiced phrase and connected speech were more successful in demonstrating voice change for some of the perturbation measures as compared to sustained /a/.

Conclusions: The treatment conditions were successful in improving the participants’ voices for fundamental frequency and some acoustic perturbation measures while maintaining the improvements during student teaching. In addition, the treatment conditions were successful in decreasing the negative impact of voice-related quality of life and vocal fatigue during student teaching. Future research should address the effectiveness of the various components of the GVPTM, the application of the GVPTM with patients with voice disorders, the relevance of defining auditory–perceptual terms by the anatomy and physiology of the voice production system (i.e., Estill Voice Training), and the continued use of the VoiceEvalU8 app for clinical voice investigations.

Supplemental Material S1. Video describing the GVPTM in the RTSS framework.

Supplemental Material S2. Video demonstrating the VoiceEvalU8 app, server, and web portal.

Supplemental Material S3. Examples of the voices trained in both the in-person and telepractice GVPTM treatment conditions.

Supplemental Material S4. Example of belt and oral twang.

Supplemental Material S5. Example of blocked practice.

Supplemental Material S6. Example of random practice.

Grillo, E. U. (2021). A nonrandomized trial for student teachers of an in-person and telepractice global voice prevention and therapy model with Estill Voice Training assessed by the VoiceEvalU8 app. American Journal of Speech-Language Pathology. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1044/2020_AJSLP-20-00200