PURPOSE: to investigate spectral parameters on voices of mouth-breathing children so as to contribute to the characterization of this population, thus to an efficient diagnosis. METHODS: fifty mouth-breathing children and one hundred and one nasal breathing children were selected among five and ten year old children of both genders. Recordings were obtained from carrier phrases and segments of the oral vowels [a], [i] and [u] of Brazilian Portuguese in the stressed syllable were selected to estimate the fundamental frequency (f0) and the frequency of the first three formants (F1, F2 e F3). The signals were recorded, cut out and processed using Praat software. RESULTS: the fundamental frequency for the vowels [i] and [u] showed lower frequency in the mouth-breathing group, while the frequency F1 of the vowel [u] was higher in the same group. CONCLUSION: our findings pointed out that the fundamental frequency is a vocal parameter that helps us to differentiate mouth-breathing children from nasal breathers, therefore contributing for a mouth breathing classification system.
Mouth Breathing; Voice; Signal Processing; Computer-Assisted; Child; Speech Acoustics
