Disorder of Vocal Loudness Perception
A lack of awareness or perception of one’s personal vocal “volume level” to the point that it is creating difficulty in one’s life. If asked to place oneself on a personal loudness scale from 1 to 7, most individuals can do so with reasonable accurateness. Occasionally, however, an individual (with normal hearing ability) lacks this kind of self-insight, and such an individual could be said to have a disorder of vocal loudness perception.
Patient Example 1
At one end of this spectrum was a patient who was an operatic tenor. He had a powerful, almost head-rattling voice even in close quarters in a quiet room, and he was aware that others thought him loud, but he clearly could not “relate” to this. When coaxed and coached repeatedly to use a moderate voice to read a passage out loud, he quite sincerely (and loudly!) said, “Oh, I could never do that! That’s whispering!”
Patient Example 2
At the other end of the spectrum, there was a 30-something woman with a voice one had to strain to hear. When she was coaxed and coached to read the same passage with a moderately loud voice, her utterly sincere but almost whispered reply? “Oh, I couldn’t talk like that. That’s yelling.”
Understanding the Loudness Scale
Vocal loudness can vary between individuals considerably and still be accepted as “within normal limits.” Yet the two individuals described above were considered to have a disorder of vocal loudness perception because their inappropriate vocal loudness was exceptional enough to cause life difficulty.
The man had considerable vocal cord injury, and the young woman was struggling at her job, with customers who were occasionally angry about the impossibility of hearing her. The approach was the same with both of these individuals: both were asked to retrain their “set point” for personal vocal loudness by recruiting other people (and their ears) to the re-training task.
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Vocal Loudness “set point”
Some people are naturally soft-spoken, while others project their voices more loudly. This variation between people is partly due to the unique acoustics of each voice but, more importantly, it stems from each individual’s innate sense of appropriate loudness—where they instinctively set their “vocal volume dial.” For most people, these differences cause no issues.
However, when there is a significant mismatch between how a speaker perceives their own vocal loudness and how others hear it, challenges can arise. Being unusually soft-spoken may lead to social difficulties, while consistently speaking too loudly can lead to vocal cord strain or damage. This video explores the concept of vocal loudness perception disorders and what can be done to address them.