Teaching methods for perceptual learning: evaluating graduate and undergraduate students’ ability to detect and rate pathological voices using the GIRBAS scale

During a voice evaluation, a speech-language pathologist must listen to a voice to determine if a disorder is present or not. There are several tools that help make this judgment, including perceptual scales, which allow the speech-language pathologist to characterize the voice disorder by detecting the presence or absence of pathological qualities and determine how severe the disorder is by assigning a severity rating to those qualities. These scales, while easy to use, are often prone to poor agreement from clinician to clinician. Recent research has sought to address this issue, but questions still remain regarding what aspect(s) of using the perceptual scales are most difficult. This lack of knowledge results in poorly defined training for speech-language pathology students learning to make these voice judgments. This study sought to determine what aspect of perceptual voice ratings are most difficult for students and assess the effectiveness of two training programs. Results from this study suggest students using perceptual scales struggle more with assigning severity ratings than detecting pathological qualities. Further results indicate the two aspects of making a perceptual voice rating are influenced by different factors. After training, neither protocol increased the accuracy of student ratings.