2001 Volume 42 Issue 1 Pages 1-8
This paper describes attempts to control pitch by applying finger pressure for electrolaryngeal or intra-mouth vibrating speech. Two control strategies were employed: (1) pitch was determined directly by finger pressure; (2) pitch was determined by binary commands of voicing and accent, which are coded according to the intensity of finger pressure. As a reference, conventional pitch control with expiration pressure (3) was also examined. In the experiments, naturalness of pitch control was evaluated when the laryngectomee spoke through an electrolarynx or an intra-mouth vibrator. The results indicated that binary pitch control using finger pressure (2) was more effective than direct pitch control using finger pressure (1), and as natural as direct pitch control with expiration pressure (3) . Compared with direct pitch control using expiration pressure, binary pitch control offers additional advantages in terms of simplicity and availability for all patients.
