Vocal deviation and presence of signs and symptoms of attention deficit and hyperactivity disorder – ADHD

Child dysphonia is a communication disorder that affects the natural voice production. Children with attention deficit and hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) are seen as talkative and many times as bad behaving or misbehaving kids during several different activities. The attention deficit and hyperactivity disorder is a difficulty to control impulses. It is also characterized by the presence of attention and hyperactivity problems. The purpose of the present study was to check the relation between vocal deviation and presence of signs and symptoms of ADHD in boys due to the greater incidence of both dysphonia and ADHD in the male population. A number of 71 male children, aged 8-11 years, 40 with signs and symptoms of ADHD (experimental group) and 31 without these signs and symptoms participated in this study. The sustained vowel /ε/ as in bed during habitual phonation was collected for the voice analysis. Vocal quality was assessed by means of perceptual analysis (GIRBAS scale). Dr. Speech, 3.1, Vocal Assessment Module (Tiger DRS Inc.) software was used for the acoustic analysis. The vocal parameters selected for the analysis were: fundamental frequency, jitter APQ, shimmer PPQ, and neutralized noise energy (NNE).In order to check signs and symptoms of ADHD the Benczik Scale was used. The results demonstrated that there is no statistically significant relation between vocal deviation and attention deficit and hyperactivity disorder. However, the experimental group showed higher degree of vocal deviation when compared to the control group.(AU)