Alterações psicofisiológicas e vocais em indivíduos submetidos ao teste de simulação de falar em público

• Autor(a) principal: Almeida, Anna Alice Figueirêdo de [UNIFESP]
• Data de Publicação: 2009
• Tipo de documento: Tese
• Idioma: por
• Título da fonte: Repositório Institucional da UNIFESP
• dARK ID: ark:/48912/001300000f5wp
• Texto Completo: http://repositorio.unifesp.br/handle/11600/8891
• topic: Comportamento; Ansiedade; Comunicação; Voz; Escala de ansiedade frente a teste

The purpose of the present study was to check whether anxiety generated by a anxiolytic task modified subjects’ responses concerning psychological, physiological and vocal parameters, as well as to investigate the possible existing correlation between trait anxiety and state anxiety and the selected vocal parameters. The study included 24 subjects, 12 men and 12 women, aged 19-42 years, with no psychiatric history. Volunteers were submitted to the clinical anxiety model using the Simulated Public Speaking (SPS) test. The score of State-Trait Anxiety Inventory (STAI), especially STAI-Trait, enabled the division of participants into two groups: LOW ANXIETY and HIGH ANXIETY. We assessed psychological parameters (STAI), physiological parameters (heart rate, skin electrical conductance, temperature in the extremities, frontal muscle electromyography, and salivary cortisol), and vocal parameters (vocal self-assessment, perceptual, auditory and visual assessment of communication, and acoustic analysis) at baseline, during and after SPS. SPS induced affections in all psychological, physiological and vocal parameters. We observed increase in state anxiety, heart rate and skin electrical conductance during the application of the test, and the values were superior to those obtained before and after the task. As to temperature, we detected decrease during performance of the task, as compared to baseline and the end of the task. Subjects presented similar and normal range salivary cortisol at baseline and during SPS. Vocal self-assessment of HIGH ANXIETY group was worse than of LOW ANXIETY group. Subjects in HIGH ANXIETY group had greater impairment in vocal quality and more vocal symptoms. The results suggested that experimentally-induced anxiety in healthy volunteers was capable of generating physiological and vocal affections. The higher the level of trait anxiety, the higher the impairment of communication and quality of life, involving different aspects related with vocal use, in addition to the presence of more vocal signs and symptoms.