Perceptual and Acoustic Effects of Dual-Focus Speech Treatment in Children With Dysarthria

Purpose Children with dysarthria secondary to cerebral palsy may experience reduced speech intelligibility and diminished communicative participation. However, minimal research has been conducted examining the outcomes of behavioral speech treatments in this population. This study examined the effect of Speech Intelligibility Treatment (SIT), a dual-focus speech treatment targeting increased articulatory excursion and vocal intensity, on intelligibility of narrative speech, speech acoustics, and communicative participation in children with dysarthria. Method American English–speaking children with dysarthria ( n = 17) received SIT in a 3-week summer camplike setting at Columbia University. SIT follows motor-learning principles to train the child-friendly, dual-focus strategy, “Speak with your big mouth and strong voice.” Children produced a story narrative at baseline, immediate posttreatment (POST), and at 6-week follow-up (FUP). Outcomes were examined via blinded listener ratings of ease of understanding ( n = 108 adult listeners), acoustic analyses, and questionnaires focused on communicative participation. Results SIT resulted in significant increases in ease of understanding at POST, that were maintained at FUP. There were no significant changes to vocal intensity, speech rate, or vowel spectral characteristics, with the exception of an increase in second formant difference between vowels following SIT. Significantly enhanced communicative participation was evident at POST and FUP. Considerable variability in response to SIT was observed between children . Conclusions Dual-focus treatment shows promise for improving intelligibility and communicative participation in children with dysarthria, although responses to treatment vary considerably across children. Possible mechanisms underlying the intelligibility gains, enhanced communicative participation, and variability in treatment effects are discussed.

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DAF as Instrumental Treatment for Dysarthria in Progressive Supranuclear Palsy

Journal of Speech and Hearing Disorders ◽

10.1044/jshd.4502.268 ◽

1980 ◽

Vol 45 (2) ◽

pp. 268-276 ◽

Cited By ~ 27

Author(s):

Wayne R. Hanson ◽

E. Jeffry Metter

Keyword(s):

Progressive Supranuclear Palsy ◽

Auditory Feedback ◽

Speech Intelligibility ◽

Speech Rate ◽

Communication Disorders ◽

Delayed Auditory Feedback ◽

Rate Intensity ◽

The Subject ◽

Vocal Intensity

In this case study, a 59-year-old male with progressive supranuclear palsy and hypokinetic dysarthria wore a small, solid state, battery operated, delayed auditory feedback device to reduce speech rate and to aid speech intelligibility. Time series measurements were made from tape recordings taken at the beginning of treatment and again after three months of daily wearing of the device. Measures of speech rate, intensity, and overall intelligibility indicate that when the instrument is worn, the subject's speech is slowed, vocal intensity increases, and intelligibility is markedly improved. The subject and his family report satisfaction with the instrument. The application of delayed auditory feedback to the treatment of communication disorders is discussed.

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Second Formant Transitions of Selected Consonant-Vowel Combinations in the Speech of Deaf and Normal-Hearing Children

Journal of Speech and Hearing Research ◽

10.1044/jshr.1902.279 ◽

1976 ◽

Vol 19 (2) ◽

pp. 279-289 ◽

Cited By ~ 27

Author(s):

Randall B. Monsen

Keyword(s):

Speech Intelligibility ◽

Normal Subjects ◽

Normal Hearing ◽

Hearing Impaired ◽

Acoustic Cues ◽

Target Frequency ◽

Second Formant ◽

Hearing Children

Although it is well known that the speech produced by the deaf is generally of low intelligibility, the sources of this low speech intelligibility have generally been ascribed either to aberrant articulation of phonemes or inappropriate prosody. This study was designed to determine to what extent a nonsegmental aspect of speech, formant transitions, may differ in the speech of the deaf and of the normal hearing. The initial second formant transitions of the vowels /i/ and /u/ after labial and alveolar consonants (/b, d, f/) were compared in the speech of six normal-hearing and six hearing-impaired adolescents. In the speech of the hearing-impaired subjects, the second formant transitions may be reduced both in time and in frequency. At its onset, the second formant may be nearer to its eventual target frequency than in the speech of the normal subjects. Since formant transitions are important acoustic cues for the adjacent consonants, reduced F 2 transitions may be an important factor in the low intelligibility of the speech of the deaf.

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From Speech Acoustics to Communicative Participation in Dysarthria: Toward a Causal Framework

Journal of Speech Language and Hearing Research ◽

10.1044/2021_jslhr-21-00306 ◽

2021 ◽

pp. 1-14

Author(s):

Stephanie A. Borrie ◽

Camille J. Wynn ◽

Visar Berisha ◽

Tyson S. Barrett

Keyword(s):

Speech Rate ◽

Objective Measure ◽

Strong Relationship ◽

World Health ◽

International Classification Of Functioning ◽

Speech Acoustics ◽

Communicative Participation ◽

Causal Framework ◽

Moderate Relationship

Purpose: We proposed and tested a causal instantiation of the World Health Organization's International Classification of Functioning, Disability and Health (ICF) framework, linking acoustics, intelligibility, and communicative participation in the context of dysarthria. Method: Speech samples and communicative participation scores were collected from individuals with dysarthria ( n = 32). Speech was analyzed for two acoustic metrics (i.e., articulatory precision and speech rate), and an objective measure of intelligibility was generated from listener transcripts. Mediation analysis was used to evaluate pathways of effect between acoustics, intelligibility, and communicative participation. Results: We observed a strong relationship between articulatory precision and intelligibility and a moderate relationship between intelligibility and communicative participation. Collectively, data supported a significant relationship between articulatory precision and communicative participation, which was almost entirely mediated through intelligibility. These relationships were not significant when speech rate was specified as the acoustic variable of interest. Conclusion: The statistical corroboration of our causal instantiation of the ICF framework with articulatory acoustics affords important support toward the development of a comprehensive causal framework to understand and, ultimately, address restricted communicative participation in dysarthria.

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Anticipatory Coarticulation in Multiple Sclerosis and Parkinson's Disease

Journal of Speech Language and Hearing Research ◽

10.1044/1092-4388(2003/077) ◽

2003 ◽

Vol 46 (4) ◽

pp. 990-1008 ◽

Cited By ~ 16

Author(s):

Kris Tjaden

Keyword(s):

Multiple Sclerosis ◽

Parkinson’S Disease ◽

Parkinson's Disease ◽

Speech Rate ◽

Subtle Difference ◽

Perceptual Contrast ◽

Healthy Control ◽

Perceptual Characteristics ◽

Second Formant ◽

First Moment

Research investigating coarticulatory patterns in dysarthria has the potential to provide insight regarding deficits in the organizational coherence of phonetic events that may underlie deviant perceptual characteristics. The current study investigated anticipatory coarticulation for 17 speakers with multiple sclerosis (MS), 12 speakers with Parkinson's disease (PD), and 29 healthy control speakers. V1-C-V2 sequences were used to investigate intersyllabic vowel to vowel effects (V2 to V1 effects), intersyllabic consonant to vowel effects (C to V1 effects), and intrasyllabic vowel to consonant effects (V2 to C effects). Second formant frequencies and first moment coefficients were used to infer coarticulation. In general, patterns of intersyllabic and intrasyllabic coarticulation were similar for speakers with MS, speakers with PD, and healthy control speakers. It therefore appears unlikely that coarticulatory patterns for speakers diagnosed with MS or PD strongly contribute to deviant perceptual characteristics, at least for the current group of speakers, most of whom were mildly to moderately impaired. Anticipatory vowel effects in /k/+vowel sequences, however, tended to be reduced for speakers with MS and speakers with PD when data for these 2 speaker groups were pooled and compared to control speakers. These results were not attributable to group differences in speech rate or articulatory scaling, defined as the extent of articulatory movements, and further suggest that coarticulatory deficits are not unique to particular neurological diagnoses or dysarthrias. Potential explanations for the /k/+vowel results include difficulties with anterior—posterior tongue positioning and the competing influences of minimizing articulatory effort and maintaining sufficient perceptual contrast. Despite this subtle difference in coarticulation between disordered speakers and healthy control speakers, the overall results suggest that anticipatory coarticulation for speakers with MS and speakers with PD is preserved.

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Effect of speech rate for sentences on speech intelligibility

2014 IEEE International Conference on Communiction Problem-solving ◽

10.1109/iccps.2014.7062261 ◽

2014 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Aihong Du ◽

Chundan Lin ◽

Jingjing Wang

Keyword(s):

Speech Intelligibility ◽

Speech Rate

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Acoustic and Perceptual Consequences of Speech Cues for Children With Dysarthria

Journal of Speech Language and Hearing Research ◽

10.1044/2017_jslhr-s-16-0274 ◽

2017 ◽

Vol 60 (6S) ◽

pp. 1766-1779 ◽

Cited By ~ 8

Author(s):

Erika S. Levy ◽

Younghwa M. Chang ◽

Joséphine A. Ancelle ◽

Megan J. McAuliffe

Keyword(s):

Cerebral Palsy ◽

Speech Rate ◽

Clear Speech ◽

Acoustic Measures ◽

Speech Styles ◽

Working Space ◽

Word Level ◽

Speech Cues ◽

Vocal Intensity ◽

Intelligibility Ratings

Purpose Reductions in articulatory working space and vocal intensity have been linked to intelligibility deficits in children with dysarthria due to cerebral palsy. However, few studies have examined the outcomes of behavioral treatments aimed at these underlying impairments or investigated which treatment cues might best facilitate improved intelligibility. This study assessed the effects of cues targeting clear speech (i.e., “Speak with your big mouth”) and greater vocal intensity (i.e., “Speak with your strong voice”) on acoustic measures of speech production and intelligibility. Method Eight children with spastic dysarthria due to cerebral palsy repeated sentence- and word-level stimuli across habitual, big mouth, and strong voice conditions. Acoustic analyses were conducted, and 48 listeners completed orthographic transcription and scaled intelligibility ratings. Results Both cues resulted in significant changes to vocal intensity and speech rate although the degree of change varied by condition. In a similar manner, perceptual analysis revealed significant improvements to intelligibility with both cues; however, at the single-word level, big mouth outperformed strong voice. Conclusion Children with dysarthria are capable of changing their speech styles differentially in response to cueing. Both the big mouth and strong voice cues hold promise as intervention strategies to improve intelligibility in this population. Supplemental Material https://doi.org/10.23641/asha.5116843

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Intelligibility Evaluation of Pathological Speech through Multigranularity Feature Extraction and Optimization

Computational and Mathematical Methods in Medicine ◽

10.1155/2017/2431573 ◽

2017 ◽

Vol 2017 ◽

pp. 1-8 ◽

Cited By ~ 5

Author(s):

Chunying Fang ◽

Haifeng Li ◽

Lin Ma ◽

Mancai Zhang

Keyword(s):

Feature Extraction ◽

Speech Intelligibility ◽

Spectral Characteristics ◽

Recognition Rate ◽

Support Vector ◽

Independent Innovation ◽

Speech Distortion ◽

Novel Method ◽

Radar Chart ◽

Combined Feature

Pathological speech usually refers to speech distortion resulting from illness or other biological insults. The assessment of pathological speech plays an important role in assisting the experts, while automatic evaluation of speech intelligibility is difficult because it is usually nonstationary and mutational. In this paper, we carry out an independent innovation of feature extraction and reduction, and we describe a multigranularity combined feature scheme which is optimized by the hierarchical visual method. A novel method of generating feature set based on S-transform and chaotic analysis is proposed. There are BAFS (430, basic acoustics feature), local spectral characteristics MSCC (84, Mel S-transform cepstrum coefficients), and chaotic features (12). Finally, radar chart and F-score are proposed to optimize the features by the hierarchical visual fusion. The feature set could be optimized from 526 to 96 dimensions based on NKI-CCRT corpus and 104 dimensions based on SVD corpus. The experimental results denote that new features by support vector machine (SVM) have the best performance, with a recognition rate of 84.4% on NKI-CCRT corpus and 78.7% on SVD corpus. The proposed method is thus approved to be effective and reliable for pathological speech intelligibility evaluation.

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Vowel Acoustics in Parkinson's Disease and Multiple Sclerosis: Comparison of Clear, Loud, and Slow Speaking Conditions

Journal of Speech Language and Hearing Research ◽

10.1044/1092-4388(2013/12-0259) ◽

2013 ◽

Vol 56 (5) ◽

pp. 1485-1502 ◽

Cited By ~ 56

Author(s):

Kris Tjaden ◽

Jennifer Lam ◽

Greg Wilding

Keyword(s):

Multiple Sclerosis ◽

Parkinson’S Disease ◽

Parkinson's Disease ◽

Spectral Characteristics ◽

Vowel Duration ◽

Clear Speech ◽

Formant Frequency ◽

Vocal Intensity ◽

The Impact ◽

Clear Condition

Purpose The impact of clear speech, increased vocal intensity, and rate reduction on acoustic characteristics of vowels was compared in speakers with Parkinson's disease (PD), speakers with multiple sclerosis (MS), and healthy controls. Method Speakers read sentences in habitual, clear, loud, and slow conditions. Variations in clarity, intensity, and rate were stimulated using magnitude production. Formant frequency values for peripheral and nonperipheral vowels were obtained at 20%, 50%, and 80% of vowel duration to derive static and dynamic acoustic measures. Intensity and duration measures were obtained. Results Rate was maximally reduced in the slow condition, and vocal intensity was maximized in the loud condition. The clear condition also yielded a reduced articulatory rate and increased intensity, although less than for the slow or loud conditions. Overall, the clear condition had the most consistent impact on vowel spectral characteristics. Spectral and temporal distinctiveness for peripheral–nonperipheral vowel pairs was largely similar across conditions. Conclusions Clear speech maximized peripheral and nonperipheral vowel space areas for speakers with PD and MS while also reducing rate and increasing vocal intensity. These results suggest that a speech style focused on increasing articulatory amplitude yields the most robust changes in vowel segmental articulation.

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