Traditional voice assessments are typically conducted in calm clinical environments using standardized reading materials, which may fail to capture symptoms that worsen during real-world communication scenarios. This study examined how different speech elicitation tasks—reading aloud (sentences, paragraph), spontaneous storytelling, and simulated phone calls—affect acoustic, physiological, and self-reported indicators of stress and cognitive load. Ten vocally healthy female participants (aged 18–26) completed all tasks, while physiological measures of stress (i.e., galvanic skin response, heart rate) and acoustic parameters (fundamental frequency, intensity, speaking rate) were recorded. Subjective ratings were collected using the NASA Task Load Index. Storytelling and phone tasks elicited higher self-reported mental demand than reading aloud. Physiological data showed increased galvanic skin response and heart rate during spontaneous speech and phone-call tasks, indicating heightened sympathetic arousal. Simulated phone calls also significantly elevated mean fundamental frequency and intensity. Participants spoke faster during the paragraph reading task and phone calls. The physiological and acoustic variations observed across tasks validate the protocol for eliciting task-specific differences in cognitive-linguistic and emotional load. Future work will apply this protocol to populations with voice disorders to explore how these task demands interact with clinical symptoms.
Ishikawa et al. (Wed,) studied this question.