This cross-sectional study aims to examine the impact of visual cues on listeners' perception of speaker age. Eligible speaking participants include adult males and females between the ages of 18–90 years old without voice or hearing disorders. Eligibility will be determined by research coordinators via patient demographic forms and validated voice and hearing assessments. Speaking participants will have two audio recordings taken: (1) sustained vowel sound and (2) reading of the Consensus Auditory-Perceptual Evaluation of Voice (CAPE-V), a standardized tool employed to evaluate the perceptual characteristics of voice quality across a wide age range. To develop the materials for the listening participants, CAPE-V audio recordings obtained from the speaking participants will be systematically paired with race and age-matched photographs obtained from a publicly available database. The finalized materials will encompass three experimental conditions: (1) audio only, (2) audio presented with a standardized photograph of an individual matched to the speaker's gender and age, and (3) audio presented with a standardized photograph of an individual matched for gender but differing in age. Naïve listening participants, blinded to the experimental conditions, will then be presented with these materials in a randomized order and asked to estimate the perceived ages of the speakers. Additionally, basic acoustic analyses of each sustained vowel sound recording (e.g., jitter, shimmer) will be conducted by a trained professional using the speech analysis software PRAAT.

This study is being done to see if injections in different locations can help to minimize chronic cough. This is done through the injection of an anti-inflammatory medication (steroid) into your upper arm muscle. The procedure takes less than 5 minutes. There has not yet been a study completed using arm muscle injections. The safety profile of arm muscle injections is expected to be the same as the superior laryngeal nerve (SLN) injection which is in the neck is already used at MUSC in regular practice. This is the same medication and the same dosage as the arm injection in this study. By better understanding if this treatment helps improve chronic cough, an additional treatment option could be utilized for this patient population. SLN injections are usually only performed by fellowship trained laryngologists (an extra specialized year of training after ENT residency). However, if arm muscle injections are found to be equivalent in treating chronic cough, general ENT physicians could likely provide this treatment to their patients without the need to see a specialized laryngologist. This study will evaluate safety and effectiveness of the arm muscle injection. Steroids are investigational for the purpose of this study.