Preventing Vocal Abuse, Misuse, and Disorders

Catalog description

Preventing Vocal Abuse, Misuse, and Disorders is a 3 credit course intended to be the first course for all University students exploring communication sciences and disorders as a possible major, and students interested in learning specifically about vocal hygiene, voice use, vocal abuse and voice disorders. Principles of the voice mechanisms, preventing vocal abuse, and promoting vocal health across the life span are core principles of the course. The focus of this course is on preventing voice disorders and promoting activities that contribute to healthy vocal habits across the life span. The course is designed to integrate theoretical knowledge, practice-based, and measurement-focused activities to assist learners in understanding, achieving, maintaining, and promoting a lifetime of healthy vocal activities. Learning activities include use of specialized computer instrumentation for analyzing voice qualities. The educational objectives of the course are to: 1) develop a basic understanding of the normal and disordered vocal mechanism; 2) understand the need for maintaining and promoting lifetime wellness in your vocal activities and habits for any occupational choice; 3) learn about the prevention of vocal disorders across the life span from vocal nodules to laryngeal cancer; 4) understand the subjective and objective measures of vocal qualities to assist in changing and altering vocal abuses and misuses while improving and enhancing good vocal habits, and 5) developing an understanding of how vocal behaviors influence social behaviors, employment, and quality of life. The course includes an overview of the anatomy and physiology of the respiratory and vocal mechanisms, physics of voice production, development of vocal abuses and resulting pathologies, disorders including vocal growths, paralysis, voice disorders associated with cleft lip and cleft palate, syndromes, neurodegenerative disorders, aging and head and neck cancer.