Acoustic and perceptual speech characteristics of native Mandarin speakers with Parkinson's disease

Hsu, Sih Chiao; Jiao, Yuchen; McAuliffe, Megan J.; Berisha, Visar; Wu, Ruey‐Meei; Levy, Erika S.

doi:10.1121/1.4978342

Cited by 33 publications

(30 citation statements)

References 25 publications

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“…English speaking PD patients with hypokinetic dysarthria have the same salient speech features as PD patients who speak other languages, such as Spanish and Korean [12]. Japanesespeaking PD patients also present with dysarthria and have the same speech characteristics as English-speaking patients [13].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 97%

Effectiveness of Lee Silverman Voice Treatment® LOUD on Japanese-Speaking Patients with Parkinson’s Disease

Nakayama

Yamamoto

Oda

et al. 2020

Rehabilitation Research and Practice

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Background. Lee Silverman Voice Treatment® LOUD (LSVT®) is an intensive program devised in the United States to train patients with Parkinson’s disease (PD) to speak louder, at normal intensity, while keeping a good voice quality. Four weeks of LSVT® has been shown to increase vocal loudness and improve intelligibility among Japanese-speaking PD patients. However, the long-term effects of LSVT® have not been examined in these patients. Objective. This study aimed to investigate the long-term effects of LSVT® on Japanese-speaking PD patients. Methods. Twenty-one Japanese PD patients underwent a standardized course (four sessions over four consecutive days, for four weeks) of LSVT® at our hospital. Vocal loudness and intelligibility were assessed at the following three time-points: pretreatment (baseline), immediately after treatment, and at the end of the 12 month follow-up (12FU). Sound pressure levels (dB SPL) were measured during the following tasks: sustained phonation of /a/, reading a standardized text, and delivery of a monologue. Three experienced speech-language pathologists, who were blinded to patients’ identities and assessment points, assessed speech intelligibility based on recorded audio samples of each participant during the reading and monologue tasks. Results. Fourteen patients were evaluated at 12FU. Changes in dB SPL from baseline to immediately after treatment were +6.5 dB, +4.2 dB, and +2.8 dB, and those from baseline until 12FU were +4.7 dB, +3.5 dB, and +2.5 dB in sustained phonation of /a/, reading a passage, and delivery of a monologue, respectively. These changes were significant (p < 0.025) in both the baseline-to-immediately-after-treatment and baseline-to-12FU intervals. Intelligibility relative to baseline was significantly improved immediately after treatment, but not at 12FU. Conclusions. LSVT® had a long-term effect on the vocal loudness of Japanese-speaking PD patients. A short-term effect was seen in intelligibility, however, there was no significant long-term effect.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 97%

Effectiveness of Lee Silverman Voice Treatment® LOUD on Japanese-Speaking Patients with Parkinson’s Disease

Nakayama

Yamamoto

Oda

et al. 2020

Rehabilitation Research and Practice

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“…Alternatively, dysarthria may manifest differently across languages at segmental and prosodic levels (Hsu et al . 2017, Liss et al . 2013), as might the effects of global cueing strategies.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Effects of speech cues in French‐speaking children with dysarthria

Levy

Moya‐Galé

Chang

et al. 2020

Intl J Lang & Comm Disor

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Background: Articulatory excursion and vocal intensity are reduced in many children with dysarthria due to cerebral palsy (CP), contributing to the children's intelligibility deficits and negatively affecting their social participation. However, the effects of speech-treatment strategies for improving intelligibility in this population are understudied, especially for children who speak languages other than English. In a cueing study on English-speaking children with dysarthria, acoustic variables and intelligibility improved when the children were provided with cues aimed to increase articulatory excursion and vocal intensity. While French is among the top 20 most spoken languages in the world, dysarthria and its management in French-speaking children are virtually unexplored areas of research. Information gleaned from such research is critical for providing an evidence base on which to provide treatment. Aims: To examine acoustic and perceptual changes in the speech of French-speaking children with dysarthria, who are provided with speech cues targeting greater articulatory excursion (French translation of 'speak with your big mouth') and vocal intensity (French translation of 'speak with your strong voice'). This study investigated whether, in response to the cues, the children would make acoustic changes and listeners would perceive the children's speech as more intelligible. Methods & Procedures: Eleven children with dysarthria due to CP (six girls, five boys; ages 4;11-17;0 years; eight with spastic CP, three with dyskinetic CP) repeated pre-recorded speech stimuli across three speaking conditions (habitual, 'big mouth' and 'strong voice'). Stimuli were sentences and contrastive words in phrases. Acoustic analyses were conducted. A total of 66 Belgian-French listeners transcribed the children's utterances orthographically and rated their ease of understanding on a visual analogue scale at sentence and word levels.Outcomes & Results: Acoustic analyses revealed significantly longer duration in response to the big mouth cue at sentence level and in response to both the big mouth and strong voice cues at word level. Significantly higher vocal sound-pressure levels were found following both cues at sentence and word levels. Both cues elicited significantly higher first-formant vowel frequencies and listeners' greater ease-of-understanding ratings at word level. Increases in the percentage of words transcribed correctly and in sentence ease-of-understanding ratings, however, did not reach statistical significance. Considerable variability between children was observed. Conclusions & Implications: Speech cues targeting greater articulatory excursion and vocal intensity yield significant acoustic changes in French-speaking children with dysarthria. However, the changes may only aid listeners' ease of understanding at word level. The significant findings and great inter-speaker variability are generally consistent with studies on English-speaking children with dysarthria, although changes appear more constrained in ...

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“…Investigations of vowel acoustics in dysarthria have primarily been conducted in English speakers, as reviewed above, with some evidence in other languages, including Mandarin (Liu et al 2005, Hsu et al 2017, Mou et al 2019 and French (Martel-Sauvageau et al 2015). Similar to findings in English, these studies have demonstrated a reduction of the acoustic vowel space among speakers with dysarthria in comparison with healthy peers (Mandarin) or acoustic changes following treatment (French).…”

Section: Speech Intelligibility and Acoustic Measuresmentioning

confidence: 90%

“…As its name implies, the VSA calculates the acoustic area within the corner vowels, as either vowel quadrilateral (four corner vowels /ɑ/, /ae/, /i/, /u/) or vowel triangle (tVSA; three corner vowels /ɑ/, /i/, /u/) in the correlating vowel systems. A reduction of this area has been demonstrated in dysarthric speech in both developmental (e.g., Higgins andHodge 2002, Mou et al 2019), and acquired (Hsu et al 2017) dysarthria, and is attributed to reduced movement of the articulators to their typical placement during vowel production (also termed articulatory undershoot; Kent and Kim 2003). The VSA metric was found to correlate with degree of centralization and dysarthria severity in individuals with dysarthria of mixed aetiologies (Fletcher et al 2017).…”

Section: Vowel Space Area (Vsa)mentioning

confidence: 96%

Acoustic vowel analysis and speech intelligibility in young adult Hebrew speakers: Developmental dysarthria versus typical development

Carl

Icht

2021

Intl J Lang & Comm Disor

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Background: Developmental dysarthria is a motor speech impairment commonly characterized by varying levels of reduced speech intelligibility. The relationship between intelligibility deficits and acoustic vowel space among these individuals has long been noted in the literature, with evidence of vowel centralization (e.g., in English and Mandarin). However, the degree to which this centralization occurs and the intelligibility-acoustic relationship is maintained in different vowel systems has yet to be studied thoroughly. In comparison with American English, the Hebrew vowel system is significantly smaller, with a potentially smaller vowel space area, a factor that may impact upon the comparisons of the acoustic vowel space and its correlation with speech intelligibility. Data on vowel space and speech intelligibility are particularly limited for Hebrew speakers with motor speech disorders. Aims: To determine the nature and degree of vowel space centralization in Hebrew-speaking adolescents and young adults with dysarthria, in comparison with typically developing (TD) peers, and to correlate these findings with speech intelligibility scores. Methods & Procedures: Adolescents and young adults with developmental dysarthria (secondary to cerebral palsy (CP) and other motor deficits, n = 17) and their TD peers (n = 17) were recorded producing Hebrew corner vowels within single words. For intelligibility assessments, naïve listeners transcribed those words produced by speakers with CP, and intelligibility scores were calculated. Outcomes & Results: Acoustic analysis of vowel formants (F1, F2) revealed a centralization of vowel space among speakers with CP for all acoustic metrics of vowel formants, and mainly for the formant centralization ratio (FCR), in comparison with TD peers. Intelligibility scores were correlated strongly with the FCR metric for speakers with CP. Conclusions & Implications: The main results, vowel space centralization for speakers with CP in comparison with TD peers, echo previous cross-linguistic results. The correlation of acoustic results with speech intelligibility carries clinical implications. Taken together, the results contribute to better characterization of the speech production deficit in Hebrew speakers with motor speech disorders. Furthermore, they may guide clinical decision-making and intervention planning to improve speech intelligibility.

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Acoustic and perceptual speech characteristics of native Mandarin speakers with Parkinson's disease

Cited by 33 publications

References 25 publications

Effectiveness of Lee Silverman Voice Treatment® LOUD on Japanese-Speaking Patients with Parkinson’s Disease

Effectiveness of Lee Silverman Voice Treatment® LOUD on Japanese-Speaking Patients with Parkinson’s Disease

Effects of speech cues in French‐speaking children with dysarthria

Acoustic vowel analysis and speech intelligibility in young adult Hebrew speakers: Developmental dysarthria versus typical development

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