In the few reported studies on the effects of drug therapy on the speech symptoms of patients with Parkinson'8 disease, the conclusion generally has been that medication does not improve speech. Recent studies on the drug, L-dopa, indio cate that large doses reduce the severity of physical signs and symptoms. In this investigation, the speech of 21 parkinsonian patients was evaluated under various conditions of L-dopa therapy. Although statistical significance was obtained for only one aspect (the time factor) of speech in favor of improvement during maximal dosage (4-8 gm daily), there appeared to be a trend in the direction of improved speech during L-dopa therapy. These findings are not nearly as dramatic as the improvement in physical symptoms observed in the same patients. However, the speech changes all occurred within less than one month; greater changes might have been observed had the patients been followed for a longer period with maximal dosage.Speech pathologists have long been concerned with the speech disorder associated with Parkinson's disease, and have identified the various aspects of speech impairment during the progression of parkinsonism (1-4). These include speaking-time characteristics, clarity of articulation, quality and pitch of the voice and vocal intensity. There is, however, a paucity of literature concerning the relationship between speech behavior and the major therapies-drug or surgical. Although the few reported studies generally indicate that the speech disorder is not significantly improved by either drug therapy or surgical intervention (5-7), an exception is an early report by Birkmayer and Hornykiewicz (8) on the effects of the drug, L-dopa. These authors observed improvement in speech as well as in many other symptoms of parkinsonism during treatment with L-dopa.After this initial study, other investigators began to test the drug and to publish diverse results (9-11); some reported a marked reduction of symptoms whereas others reported little change. Apparently the reason

The purpose of this research was to investigate the perception of elderly and chronically ill patients regarding the spoken communication that occurs in a long-term care institution. Twenty-four patients were given a focused semi-standardized interview to investigate their perception of how much they talked, their communication partners, where they talked, their topics, their desire and enjoyment in talking, factors affecting communication, and suggestions for improving the communication atmosphere in this setting. Results indicate that communication is limited in quantity and scope, though elderly patients desire communicative interaction. The results of the study are explained from two perspectives-how the patients themselves contribute to the limited communication and how institutional life restricts interaction. Implications for the speech pathologist are given.

The purpose of the present study was to examine the divergent semantic behaviors of 30 persons with aphasia in comparison to these same behaviors in a group of 30 normal individuals. Specifically, this study examined fluency or the number of ideas produced, flexibility or the variety of ideas produced, and communality within each subject group and between the two groups. Results support the existence of the divergent mental operation and indicate that persons with aphasia are impaired in their ability to generate semantic responses under this operation. Therefore, speech pathologists may wish to include divergent tasks in their evaluation procedures and plan therapy directed toward the retrieval of divergent responses.

Thirty subjects with primary Parkinson’s disease, each of whom was classified as being in one of three stages of disease progression, were examined for the presence of infantile oroneuromotor activity and evaluated for severity of speech disorder. It was expected that greater speech defectiveness and an increased incidence and strength of infantile oroneuromotor symptoms would accompany each stage of disease progression. Although severity of speech disorder and presence of infantile oroneuromotor symptomatology did not parallel the various stages of disease progression, the results of this study indicate that in the most severe stage of parkinsonian progression, subjects were more severely impaired in speech ability, and more subjects evidenced infantile oroneuromotor symptomatology. Since infantile oral reflexology was tested independently of speech, it is not known if these patterns become released during the act of speaking: it could not be determined whether any released activity occurred intraorally, and observation of each of the subjects during the act of speaking did not reveal infantile oroneuromotor patterns akin to those which have been reported in the literature in relation to cerebral palsied individuals.

This study examined the relationship between student clinicians' and supervisors' perceptions of interpersonal conditions offered by supervisors and estimates of professional growth of the student clinicians. Thirty-one female undergraduate speech pathology majors received daily supervision from 31 speech-language pathologists (cooperating teachers) employed in various school districts. Student clinicians and supervisors completed an interpersonal relationship inventory and a rating of clinical effectiveness at the beginning and end of a 12 week daily school-based practicum. The student clinicians also completed a professional self-esteem inventory. Both student clinicians and supervisors perceived a positive supervisory relationship as well as growth in the student clinicians' clinical effectiveness during the practicum experience. In addition, student clinicians perceived that their professional self-concepts had become more similar to their ideal concepts.