Journalof Voice

Vol. 2, No. 1, pp. 13-19

© 1988Raven Press, Ltd., New York

Relative Volume Changes of the Rib Cage and Abdomen

During Prephonatory Chest Wall Posturing

Thomas J. Hixon, Peter J. Watson, Frances R Harris, and Nancy B. Pearl

Department of Speech and Hearing Sciences, University of Arizona, Tucson, Arizona, U.S.A.

Summary: This study atteinpted to shed further light on the nature of pre-
phonatory chest wall posturing by means of an investigation of the relative
volume changes of the rib cage and abdomen during such posturing in normal
young adult men and women. A new form of relative-x~olume chart was de-
vised that enabled graphic display of the data in terms of selected ranges of
relative volume contributions of the rib cage and abdomen. Choice of these
ranges, reflected as contiguous segments on the devised chart, was based on
differences in functional significance among them. On the basis of the results
obtained, it was concluded that prephonatory chest wall posturing is a be-
havior that varies within and among subjects and is characterized by a wide
range of relative volume contributions of the rib cage and abdomen. Key
Words: Breathing--Prephonation--Chest wall--Rib cage--Abdomen--Pos-
t u r i n g - Kinematics-- Magnetometry-- Relative-volume chart.

At previous meetings s p o n s o r e d by The Voice
Foundation, five r e p o r t s have b e e n given con-
cerning investigations of the nature of prephona-
tory chest wall posturing in normal young adult
subjects (1-5). Table 1 summarizes these reports
with regard to selected salient features. The last
column in that table lists the wide variety of most
prevalent observations that have emerged. Dispar-
ities in such observations remain to be resolved.
We sought to shed further light on the nature of
prephonatory chest wall posturing by conducting a
new investigation of the relative volume changes of
the rib cage and abdomen during such posturing in
normal young adult men and women. We reasoned
that an investigation designed to elucidate the spe-
cific nature of the relative volume changes of the
rib cage and abdomen would represent a powerful
This paper was presented to the Sixteenth Symposium on
Care of the Professional Voice, New York, New York, June 1-5,
1987.
Address correspondence and reprint requests to Dr. Thomas
J. Hixon, Department of Speech and Hearing Sciences, Univer-
sity of Arizona, Tucson, AZ 85721, U.S.A.
approach. Toward that end, we centered our inves-
tigation on a new form o f relative-volume chart, de-
scribed subsequently.
Table 1 shows the three transduction techniques
that have been used in previous investigations o f
p r e p h o n a t o r y chest wall p o s t u r i n g - - m e r c u r y strain
gauges, inductance plethysmographs, and magne-
tometers. We have no personal experience in the
use o f m e r c u r y s t r a i n g a u g e s , b u t we d e c i d e d
against their use because of reports by other au-
thors (6) that they are more subject to m o v e m e n t
t r a n s d u c t i o n errors than i n d u c t a n c e p l e t h y s m o -
graphs and m a g n e t o m e t e r s . On the basis o f per-
sonal experience with the latter two transduction
techniques, we chose magnetometers over induc-
tance plethysmographs as the devices to use in the
present investigation because they do not load the
chest wall nearly as much, they are easier to use on
female subjects, and they do not shift in position on
the chest wall during breathing movements. To be
able to c o m p a r e our results with those r e p o r t e d
previously, we followed the same general paradigm
that was used in the investigations listed in Table 1.

13
14 T. J. H I X O N E T A L .

T A B L E 1. Previous reports on prephonatory chest wall posturing

Most prevalent
References Subjects Techniques observations

Baken and Cavallo (1)
Wilder (2)
Cavallo and Baken (3)
Wilder (4)
Hixon, Watson, and Hoit (5)
8 Men, untrained Mercury strain gauges
8 Men, trained singers Mercury strain gauges
6 Men, untrained Mercury strain gauges
8 Women, untrained Mercury strain gauges
5 Men, untrained Inductance plethysmographs and
magnetometers
Abdomen contraction and rib
cage expansion in all subjects
Abdomen contraction and rib
cage expansion in all subjects
Abdomen contraction and rib
cage expansion in all subjects
Abdomen contraction and rib
cage expansion in 4 subjects
Abdomen contraction and rib
cage contraction in 4 subjects
Abdomen contraction and rib
cage expansion in 3 subjects
Abdomen contraction or
expansion and rib cage
contraction in 2 subjects

Ten healthy young adults, five men and five were delivered at random moments following the
women, served as subjects. All had normal speech, restabilization of tidal breathing after each trial.
language, and hearing. None had received training Prior to each stimulus-response run, each subject
in singing, acting, or wind instrument playing. Per- performed an isovolume maneuver at the resting
tinent physical characteristics of the subjects are end-expiratory level. For this maneuver, the sub-
given in Table 2. ject held his or her breath, closed the larynx, and
Figure 1 illustrates the investigative array. Signal displaced volume back and forth between the rib
stimuli were 250-Hz pure tones at 70 dB sound cage and abdomen by alternately contracting and
pressure level presented through an earphone relaxing the abdomen. The data obtained from this
placed over the right ear. The speech audio signal maneuver were used for subsequent landmarking
was transduced by an air microphone positioned and calibration of display charts.
2.5 cm in front of the subject's lips. Anteropos- Data from the investigation were recorded on an
terior diameter changes of the chest wall were FM tape recorder and played back into two storage
transduced with linearized magnetometers. Two oscilloscopes. One oscilloscope displayed all four
pairs were used, one for the rib cage and one for the channels of information recorded in the form of a
abdomen. The generator coil in each pair was fixed t i m e - m o t i o n chart. The other oscilloscope dis-
at the midline anteriorly, that for the rib cage at played the two channels of chest wall information
sternal midlength, and that for the abdomen slightly recorded in the form of a relative-diameter chart.
above the umbilicus. The sensor coil in each pair Anteroposterior diameter changes of the rib cage
was fixed on the back of the torso at the midline and abdomen were converted to volume displace-
and at the same level axially as its generator mate.
Subjects were seated in a chair that had a polyure- T A B L E 2. Pertinent physical characteristics o f
the subjects
thane pad to support the torso. This pad had a rect-
angular indentation running vertically at the midline Age
to provide a space within which the coils on the Subject ID (year-month) Height (cm)' Weight (kg)
subject's back were free to move. Men
Two stimulus-response runs, one f o r / a / a n d one S 01 22-07 193.0 77.1
for /ha/, were performed by each subject, with a S 02 28-09 177.8 76.3
S 03 23-11 185.4 65.8
5-rain rest period between them. Each run included S 04 22-09 188,0 93.1
40 trials, and the order of presentation of runs was S 05 28-05 185.4 84.0
determined randomly for each subject. Subjects Women
S 06 23-10 165.1 61.3
were instructed to produce each utterance as S 07 22-11 167.6 50.9
quickly as possible upon hearing the pure-tone S 08 20-05 170.2 59.0
stimulus and to target their utterances to their usual S 09 27-10 172.7 72.6
S 10 20-00 160.0 55.4
loudness, pitch, and voice quality. Stimulus tones

Journal of Voice, Vol. 2, No. 1, 1988

 CH E ST W A L L P O S T U R I N G 15

FM TAPERECORDER STORAGE
OSCILLOSCOPES
AUDITORY
STIMULUS TIME-MOTION
I AUDIOMETERI DISPLAY

MICROPHONEIzD {AMPLIFIERl SPEECH

AUDIO
MAGNETOMETERS
A-P DIAMETER
OFRIB CAGE
/ GENERATORS SENSORS x-y
l OSCILLATOR ~ AMPLIF I E R ~ DC t-- A-P DIAMETER DISPLAY
AMPUF,ER OFABDOMEN

FIG. 1. Diagram of the investigative array.

ments by adjusting the amplifier gains on the oscil-
loscopes in such a manner that during the recorded
isovolume m a n e u v e r s the t i m e - m o t i o n chart
showed equal and opposite deflections of the rib
cage and abdomen signals, whereas during the
same m a n e u v e r s the r e l a t i v e - d i a m e t e r chart
showed analogous deflections through formation of
an isovolume line with a slope of - 1 (i.e., was
transformed into a relative-volume chart).
By use of the two display modes discussed, it
was possible to synchronize and segment pathways
formed on the relative-volume chart in relation to
the stimulus tone, speech audio signal, and volume
displacements of the rib cage and abdomen. Data
for all trials were perused in both display modes,
and portions were delimited in both charts corre-
sponding to the time between the first indication of
chest wall adjustment following stimulus onset (de-
termined from the rib cage and abdomen signals)
and the first indication of speech onset (determined
from the speech audio signal). Hard copy records
for analysis were generated by tracing the pathway
portion on the relative-volume chart onto translu-
cent paper. These records then were measured to
determine the relative volume contributions of the
rib cage and abdomen for each prephonatory chest
wall posturing.
cage and abdomen. Choice of these ranges was
guided by differences in functional significance
among them in reference to the standard relative-
volume chart. The type of display used to present
the results is shown in Fig. 2. The display is cali-
brated for volume displacements of the rib cage and
abdomen, the former increasing upward and the
latter increasing rightward. Volume displacement of
the lungs is represented along a diagonal axis, in-
creasing upward and rightward.
The center of the display circle being used as a
starting point, c h e s t wall adjustments that trace
pathways from this point into the shaded half of the
display all have in c o m m o n the fact that lung
volume change is expiratory, whereas adjustments
that would trace pathways from the same point into
the unshaded half of the display all have in common
I--
z
:~rr"
~b_
--10
o

To simplify graphic presentation of the data, the VOLUME DISPLACEMENT

cumulative frequency was determined for selected OF ABDOMEN ~-
ranges of relative volume contributions of the rib FIG. 2. Prototype display for graphic presentation of the data.

Journal of Voice, Vol. 2, No. 1, 1988

16 T. d. H I X O N E T A L .
the fact that lung volume change is inspiratory. The
shaded half of the display, which is most relevant to
our present concerns, is partitioned into four con-
tiguous segments. Numbered 1, 2, 3, and 4, coun-
terclockwise, these segments encompass pathway
slopes that, in correspondence to their numbered
segments, range, respectively, from 1, slightly less
rib cage displacement in the inspiratory direction
than abdomen displacement in the expiratory direc-
tion, up to, but not including, a sole contribution of
the abdomen in the expiratory direction (all of
which include abdomen predominance and rib cage
paradoxing* with respect to lung volume change);
2, sole contribution of the abdomen in "the expira-
tory direction, up to, but not including, equal expi-
ratory displacements of the rib cage and abdomen
in the expiratory direction (all of which include ab-
domen predominance); 3, equal displacements of
the rib cage and abdomen in the expiratory direc-
tion, up to, but not including, a sole contribution of
the rib cage in the expiratory direction (all of which
include greater rib cage than abdomen contribu-
tion); and 4, sole contribution of the rib cage in the
expiratory direction, up to, but not including,
slightly less abdomen displacement in the inspira-
tory direction than rib cage displacement in the ex-
piratory direction (all of which include rib cage pre-
dominance and abdomen paradoxing with respect
to lung volume change).
The data generated were subgrouped with regard
to where the subject was in the tidal breathing cycle
at the moment of stimulus onset, as follows: (a)
apnea at tidal end-expiration, (b) inspiration below
mid-capacity, (c) inspiration above mid-capacity,
(d) apnea at tidal end-inspiration, (e) expiration
above mid-capacity, and (f) expiration below mid-
capacity. No differences were discernible in the
data with regard to these categorizations. In addi-
tion, no differences were discernible in the data
with regard to the two different utterance condi-
tions. Accordingly, data were pooled across the
tidal breathing cycle and across t h e / a / a n d / h a /
productions.
Figure 3 summarizes data for each of the subjects
in a cumulative frequency array. Subjects 01 to 05
are men. Subjects 06 to 10 are women. Numbers
*Paradoxing is a term used to indicate that the sign of the
volume displacement of one or the other of the chest wall parts
(rib cage or abdomen) is opposite to that of lung volume change
(e.g., one part is displacing volume in the inspiratory direction,
whereas the net total volume change is expiratory).
Journal of Voice, Vol. 2, No. 1, '1988
within segments of the various panels indicate the
number of prephonatory chest wall adjustments out
of the total number (indicated below each panel)
that fell within the relative volume contribution
range for that segment. In cases where the total
number of adjustments is indicated to be <80, data
were excluded either because of a subject's report
of having not responded as quickly as possible or
because of an investigator's observation that the
subject had changed body position near the time of
stimulus p r e s e n t a t i o n . The s e g m e n t with the
highest number of adjustments in each panel is
shaded for graphic emphasis.
Examination of Fig. 3 reveals a variety of pat-
terns of p r e p h o n a t o r y chest wall adjustments
within and among subjects. Three subjects (S 02, S
05, and S' 06) most often demonstrated chest wall
adjustments that involved abdomen predominance
and rib cage paradoxing (Segment 1). Three other
subjects (S 03, S 08, and S 10) most often demon-
strated chest wall adjustments that involved ab-
domen predominance with associated rib cage expi-
ratory displacement (Segment 2). The remaining
four subjects (S 01, S 04, S 07, and S 09) most often
showed chest wall adjustments that involved rib
cage predominance with associated abdomen expi-
ratory displacement (Segment 3). None of the sub-
jects showed abdomen paradoxing as the most
often used chest wall adjustment (Segment 4).
When the data were considered with regard to
subject sex, no systematic patterns were apparent.
Both men and women showed response dominance
for rib cage paradoxing, abdomen displacement
greater than rib cage displacement, and rib cage
displacement greater than abdomen displacement.
It is relevant to note that seven responses fall
into the inspiratory portions of the panels in Fig. 3.
This means that these responses involved inspira-
tory lung volume changes. Such responses were
confined to four subjects and occurred exclusively
under circumstances where the stimulus signal was
delivered during a period of apnea at tidal end-expi-
ration (four trials) or during an inspiratory phase of
tidal breathing (three trials). As with the other 782
trials for the subject group, chest wall adjustment
from the moment of utterance initiation onward
was such that the lung volume adjustment was ex-
piratory. That is, although these few adjustments
involved inspiratory lung volume changes between
the moment of initial chest wall adjustment and the
moment of utterance onset, they did not involve the
production of utterances on inspiration.
 CHEST W A L L P O S T U R I N G
SOl S 02 S 05 S 04
N=78 N=78 N=79 N=80
S 06 S07 S 08 S 09
N=78 N=79 N=80 N=80
The present data show prephonatory chest wall
posturing to be a behavior that varies within and
among subjects and that is characterized by a wide
range of relative volume contributions of the rib
cage and abdomen. Although the present subjects
demonstrated individual preferences for particular
types of chest wall adjustments, even these were
not consistently displayed. Each subject not only
demonstrated a predominant pattern of prephona-
tory chest wall adjustment, but also often used
other types of adjustment patterns across trials of
the utterance conditions. It seems clear from these
data that there are many degrees of freedom of per-
formance both within and among subjects in ad-
justing the chest wall in preparation for utterance.
Stated in motor control parlance, it is apparent that
the spatial-temporal goal involved in prephonatory
chest wall posturing can be achieved through many
different synergistic actions of the rib cage and ab-
domen. Underlying such synergistic actions is a
presumed complementary coprogramming of the
rib cage and abdomen, the neural behavior termed
motor equivalence (7).
The data provided by the present investigation of
prephonatory chest wall posturing are substantially
different from those in previous reports, which
were based on the use of mercury strain gauge
technology. Collectively, those reports (See Table
1) indicate that all 22 men previously studied (1-3)
and half of all eight women previously studied (4)
showed abdomen contraction and rib cage expan-
sion as their most prevalent form of prephonatory
chest wall posturing (i.e., they fall in the rib cage
paradoxing category in our Fig. 2). The present re-
port, by contrast, indicates that only two of the five
men studied, and only one of the five women,
17
S 05
N=78
FIG. 3. Cumulative frequency counts of the
types of prephonatory chest wall adjustments
used by each of the subjects.
S I0
N=79
showed abdomen contraction and rib cage expan-
sion as their most prevalent form of prephonatory
chest wall posturing. Our suspicion is that the ear-
lier data of concern may have contained movement
transduction errors that resulted from soft tissue
distortion and slippage and axial rolling of the mer-
cury strain gauge sensing devices that could not
readily be detected visually during the investiga-
tions (5,8,9). Because we did not do a precise repli-
cation of these earlier investigations, a final answer
to the differences noted will have to come from
other investigators. Toward this end, we call for ad-
ditional research on the topic of prephonatory chest
wall posturing.
Acknowledgment: This work was supported by Grant
NS-21574 from the National Institute of Neurological and
Communicative Disorders and Stroke.
REFERENCES
1. Baken R, Cavallo S. Chest wall preparation for phonation in
untrained speakers. In: Lawrence V, ed. Transcripts of the
eighth symposium on care of the professional voice, part H:
respiratory and phonatory control mechanisms. New York:
The Voice Foundation, 1980.
2. Wilder C. Chest wall preparation for phonation i n trained
speakers. In: Lawrence V, ed. Transcripts of the eighth
symposium on care of the professional voice, part II: respi-
ratory and phonatory control mechanisms. New York: The
Voice Foundation, 1980.
3. Cavallo S, Baken R. The laryngeal component of prephona-
tory chest wall posturing, In: Lawrence V, ed. Transcripts
of the eleventh symposium on care of the professional voice,
part I: the scientific papers. New York: The Voice Founda-
tion, 1982.
4. Wilder C. Chest wall preparation for phonation in female
speakers. In: Bless D, Abbs J, eds. Vocal fold physiology:
contemporary research and clinical issues. San Diego, CA"
College-Hill Press, 1983.
5. Hixon T, Watson P, Holt J. Prephonatory chest wall pos-
Journal of Voice, Vol. 2, No. I, 1988
18 T. J. H I X O N E T A L.
turing. In: Lawrence V, ed. Transcripts o f the fourteenth
symposium on care o f the professional voice, part I: scien-
tific. New York: The Voice Foundation, 1985.
6. Bless D, Hunker C, Weismer G. Comparison of non-inva-
sive methods to obtain chest wall displacement and aerody-
namic measures during speech. In: Lawrence V, ed. Tran-
scripts o f the tenth symposium on care o f the professional
voice, part I: instrumentation in voice research. New York:
The Voice Foundation, 1981.
7. Hunker C, Abbs J. Control of "least automatic" speech
movements in the respiratory system. S M C L preprints.
Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Speech Motor Con-
trol Laboratories, Fall-Winter 1982.
8. Konno K, Mead J. Measurement of the separate volume
changes of rib cage and abdomen during breathing. J Appl
Physiol 1967;22:407-22.
9. Sackner M. Monitoring of ventilation without a physical
connection to the airway. In: Sackne'r M, ed. Diagnostic
techniques in p u l m o n a r y disease. New York: Marcel
Dekker, 1980.
DISCUSSION
Scherer: Tom, you studied nontrained men and
women. Do you think that if you were to study
singers and actors (there are rumors that they carry
their torsos differently while they perform) that you
would find your results would fall in specific quad-
rants, say close to the border of one and two?
Hixon: I think they have the same degrees of
freedom of performance. I think that the answer to
this issue is where you start from. Take a ridiculous
extreme. Say you were to contract your abdomen
and pull it all the way in, and then want to start an
aria. It would come out. If you were resting
breathing, and had it distended all the way out and
wanted to start an aria, it would come in. So it de-
pends on what the location on the relative-volume
chart happens to be when you're snapped into ac-
tion in the next 200 ms. A lot of it therefore, has to
do with how you choose to tidal breathe. Some
people will breathe, like I do, with the belly
hanging out, and others will breathe with the ab-
domen more in. I think part of the selection process
here of preference for pattern has to do with where
you are normally, and need to be in the singing
mode. I don't have any reason to suspect that the
trained would be any different from the untrained
here. I think it's probably largely mechanically
based.
Scherer: Do you think the trained would in fact
avoid certain manuevers that the untrained would
accept?
Hixon: I think they would avoid the extremes on
the relative-volume chart, not quadrants. They
Journal of Voice, Vol. 2, No'. 1, 1988
would stay more centralized on the chart. You
wouldn't get into extreme positions in controlling
any of the chest wall parts. That would be the most
economical biomechanical strategy.
Audience: Why do you use the surprise element?
Hixon: We did it because we wanted to test the
original paradigm that were used. Normally, we
wouldn't design the experiment that way. I'm not
suggesting that what you see there could be trans-
ferred into running speech or into running singing,
as I would call it. There's a general deformation
there that we've described here previously, where
the abdomen is in and sort of provides a firm base
for the rib cage. We followed the same paradigm to
see if we got the same results as in those other
studies.
If I might, I might break precedent and ask my-
self a question, since nobody else asked me that
question. How do women speech breathe differ-
ently than men?
We've looked at a 25-year-old group, thus far,
that is extremely well controlled for a variety of
things: body type, smoking habits, etc. Fundamen-
tally, we also controlled them for what their general
body type would be on scaling techniques that have
been developed. To make a long story short,
women tend to breathe and to talk with about 10%
more abdominal contribution than do men. This is a
little bit contrary to what some people have re-
ported in the past, but nobody in the past has con-
trolled for the body type. If you take women in gen-
eral and men in general, women have a little bit
more fat on them then men. If you pick women in
the center of the thousands of women that have
been studied and men in the center of thousands of
men that have been studied, you'll find that women
have a slightly greater abdominal contribution. If
you happen to pick women that are skinnier, they'd
have the same contribution as men. So it's the
women you pick to compare to the men and what
the body type is. This has led me to wonder if part
of the arguments that frequently come up about
what's the best form of speech breathing or singing
breathing happen to be tied into what the body type
of the teacher is. If you told me that you were an
ectomorphic teacher, and you're straight up and
down, you have very small breasts and you're es-
sentially rectilinear, then the most efficient me-
chanical strategy for you to sing would be to sing
largely with rib cage displacement. We know i f
you're very rotund, you have a lot of fat around
 CHEST WALL POSTURING
your abdomen, the most efficient way for you to
sing is to sing with a greater displacement of your
abdomen. I'm curious if anybody's thought through
whether the body type of the teacher could have
something to do with the type of respiratory pattern
he passes on to the student.
Scherer: Well, here's some room for contention.
Howell: The women who were your subjects;
were they untrained singers or were they very pow-
erful professional singers.
Hixon: These were untrained in singing and
speaking.
Audience: They weren't trained actresses? Be-
cause, as we all know, that makes a difference.
What we heard with the English counter tenors was
fascinating. We have heard highly trained people
doing whatever it was they thought they needed to
do, and their throats responded differently. It
would be wonderful if you could get highly trained,
wonderful actors to do the same things.
Hixon: Those we did last year. We presented four
of the World Shakespeare Company who were
highly trained. Their patterns are quite different, of
course, in performance. But they're analogous to
the speech patterns of novice actors. The notion
here was to see generically if there are male/female
differences that might prevail. You can get it to go
any way you want depending on what you pick for
the body type of the subject. If you say the average
female versus the average male; the average female
would have more abdominal motion than the
average male.
Wilder: Dr. Hixon, did you do any spectro-
graphic analysis on those individuals who used a
majority of either two or three in the categories you
showed of breathing patterns?
Hixon: It's predominantly for set-up, and the
idea would be you wouldn't expect to find more
falling in a category. The vocal folds would have
been open, and initiation would have been with no
laryngeal load.
19
Wilder: I was wondering if you might see any dif-
ference in formant strength?
Hixon: No, I wouldn't think so. We didn't make
any measurements on that.
Scherer: Is there any reason to believe that dif-
ferent methods of posturing will result in different
subglottal pressure functions at initiation, which
then would relate to the initial acoustic signal,
perhaps?
Hixon: I don't think so. If you start in a whis-
pered mode in which the subglottal pressure might
be substantially different, the chest wall configura-
tion set-up is the same. I think what it has to do
with, if it has to do with anything, is that if you go
way back into the thirties and look at some of
Stetson's work where he said that the abdominal
wall had t o b e postured before other things can
work off of it. I think it's probably something of
that nature. All of those quadrants could have had
abdominal activity in them. It's just that the rib
cage was more forceful in some cases. My guess is
that it is setting a platform off which the rib cage
then functions. The rib cage is probably the thing
that's delivering the driving pressure.
Scherer: Would you clarify that last point, and I
would like it if some teachers and performers would
respond to that, because the uniqueness of the use
of the respiratory system in performance is an im-
portant question.
Hixon: It's not in these data, but from the other
data that we have, suggestion would be that the ab-
domen provides a primary platform off which to
drive for singing. You firm up one pathway, the ab-
dominal pathway, and then drive off it with the rib
cage. What we see is the rib cage additionally ele-
vated and the diaphragm highly domed by that ab-
dominal contraction. That gets you more for your
money, too, when you want to inspire quickly with
the diaphragm. One way you might think of it is the
abdomen sets the platform, the rib cage plays the
tune.
Journal of Voice, Vol. 2, No. 1, 1988