Impact of Typical Aging and Parkinson’s Disease on the Relationship Among Breath Pausing, Syntax, and Punctuation

Abstract

Purpose The present study examines the impact of typical aging and Parkinson’s disease (PD) on the relationship among breath pausing, syntax, and punctuation. Methods Thirty young adults, 25 typically aging older adults, and 15 individuals with PD participated. Fifteen participants were age- and sex-matched to the individuals with PD. Participants read a passage aloud two times. Utterance length, location of breath pauses relative to punctuation and syntax, and number of disfluencies and mazes were measured. Results Older adults produced shorter utterances, a smaller percentage of breaths at major boundaries, and a greater percentage of breaths at minor boundaries than young adults, but there was no significant difference between older adults and individuals with PD on these measures. Individuals with PD took a greater percentage of breaths at locations unrelated to a syntactic boundary than control participants. Individuals with PD produced more mazes than control participants. Breaths were significantly correlated with punctuation for all groups. Conclusions Changes in breath pausing patterns in older adults are likely due to changes in respiratory physiology. However, in individuals with PD, such changes appear to result from a combination of changes to respiratory physiology and cognition.

Internally Versus Externally Cued Speech in Parkinson's Disease and Cerebellar Disease

“…For example, seeing the spacing between the printed words might trigger a speaker to provide more distinct word boundaries, or might lead the speaker to say the sentence more fluently or more loudly. Further, syntactic markers such as commas and periods are known to influence aspects of prosody, such as breath patterning, intonational contours, and rate in both healthy adult speakers and speakers with PD (Huber, Darling, Francis, & Zhang, 2012;MacPherson, Huber, & Snow, 2011;Steinhauer, 2003). Thus, written text may serve as an external cue to enhance performance similar to findings from the limb motor control literature.…”

“…In addition, the potential effects of varied linguistic contexts of utterances across speakers warrant consideration. Although content was controlled between cueing conditions, variations in sentence structure and linguistic context between speakers may have affected the reading performance and, subsequently, listener ratings (Huber et al, 2012;Pell et al, 2006).…”

“…Participants read the sentences directly off the computer screen. The use of written text was considered an externally cued task as the text serves to denote word boundaries, and punctuation (e.g., commas) is known to influence prosody, such as breath pausing (see Huber et al, 2012;Steinhauer, 2003). The reading samples were recorded using the same procedure as the covert conversational recording, and the examiner ensured the mouth-to-microphone distance had not changed.…”

The Integrative Role of the Sigh in Psychology, Physiology, Pathology, and Neurobiology

“…Disturbances in respiratory control can lead to dysarthria, which summarizes different forms of speech disorders (Enderby, 2013; Liegeois and Morgan, 2012). Patients suffering, for example, from Parkinson’s disease take a greater percentage of breaths at locations that are unrelated to a syntactic boundary, suggesting that the interaction between cognition and respiratory timing is disturbed in this patient population (Brown and Marsden, 1990; Huber and Darling, 2011; Huber et al, 2012). Thus, respiratory variability, which is highly controlled in healthy speech, can become random in a variety of disorders.…”

Pacientes com doença de Parkinson sob assistência fisioterapêutica apresentam parâmetros pulmonares melhores do que controles sedentários

“…Impairment of pulmonary function is often found among the first motor symptoms of the disease 4,5 . Pulmonary dysfunction is aggravated by progressive rigidity of chest wall, with limitations in flexibility, compromise of airways, and muscle weakness -causing difficult in speech and swallowing 6,7 . Postural changes also influence the patient's limitation concerning respiratory capacity, resulting in increased resistance to airflow and decreased pulmonary compliance 8 .…”