PURPOSE: The purpose of this study was to investigate the hypothesis that the Acoustic Assumptions (AA) approach is associated with acoustic, listener, and client-reported changes that align with the client's voice gender goals. METHOD: Pretherapy and post therapy samples of the vowels /a/, /i/, and /u/, the first three sentences of the Rainbow Passage, and self-perception questionnaires (Trans Woman Voice Questionnaire (TWVQ) and Voice-related Experiences of Nonbinary Individuals (VENI)) were analyzed for 15 transgender and gender-diverse (TGD) clients. In addition, speech-language pathology (SLP) students made blind, randomized ratings to measure gender perception of acoustic samples and to assess any perceptual change pre and post therapy. RESULTS: and F1 combined to significantly predict the treatment difference in listener-perceived femininity ratings in vowel contexts and sentence contexts, respectively, while treatment difference in sustained vowel F2 was observed to predict a treatment difference in the TWVQ self-rating. CONCLUSIONS: and vowel formants (particularly F2). For clients with feminizing goals, the approach is associated with a more feminine-sounding voice and more positive voice-related experiences in daily living. These findings suggest that AA may be a valuable gender-affirming approach to voice training.
Hirsch et al. (Sat,) studied this question.