Professor Texas Woman's University Denton, Texas, United States
Abstract: Approximately 90% of people diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease (PD) will develop hypokinetic dysarthria. Using information conveyed through speech, the listener forms a perception of the speaker. This study surveys the quality of speech with PD that influences the perception of Intelligibility, loudness, pitch, and similarity to normal speech.
Description: Parkinson's disease (PD) is the second most common neurodegenerative disease that affects more than one million Americans. Many individuals with PD develop hypokinetic dysarthria. A growing body of research investigated mainly the aspect of speech production with PD, using various acoustic analyses techniques. Relatively little is known about how the speech by individuals with PD is perceived. A listener can gather quite a bit of information from a speaker by listening to their voice. For example, we detect the speaker's emotional state, intent, pitch, and loudness, among other things. Hypokinetic dysarthria can affect pitch, loudness, preciseness of consonants, prosody, and breath control. These factors contribute to the challenges of individuals with PD in verbal communication.
The present study focused on how individuals with PD can change their speech/voice under different instructions and the effects of these instructions on the listener's perception of their speech/voice. Forty TWU students in Communication Sciences & Disorder participated in this study as listeners. They rated the recorded speech of individuals with PD in terms of (1) intelligibility, (2) loudness, (3) pitch, and (4) similarity to normal speech. For the listening materials, eight individuals with PD recorded three corner vowels and eight sentences under three different instructions, "natural speech," "loud," and "with intent," for this study. These voices are used as stimuli for the listeners to rate them on a graded scale.
The poster presentation will briefly overview the published speech perception studies first. Then, we will describe the characterizing features of hypokinetic dysarthria, discuss the acoustic markers that affect the listener's perception, and summarize the correlations between different aspects of speech produced by individuals with PD based on the result of the present study.
Presentation Format & Methods: Poster presentation with interactive conversation with questions and answers (Q&A).
Supporting Research: Reference 1: Hsu, S. C., Jiao, Y., Berisha, V., McAuliffe, M. J., Lin, P., Wu, R. M., ... & Levy, E. S. (2022). The Effects of Intensive Voice Treatment in Mandarin Speakers With Parkinson's Disease: Acoustic and Perceptual Findings. American journal of speech-language pathology, 31(3), 1354-1367.
Supporting Research: Reference 2: Knowles, T., Adams, S. G., & Jog, M. (2021). Speech Rate Mediated Vowel and Stop Voicing Distinctiveness in Parkinson's Disease. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research, 64(11), 4096-4123.
Supporting Research: Reference 3: Fishel, S. C., Hotchkiss, M. E., & Brown, S. A. (2020). The impact of LSVT BIG therapy on postural control for individuals with Parkinson disease: a case series. Physiotherapy Theory and Practice, 36(7), 834-843.
Supporting Research: Reference 4: Mollaei, F., Shiller, D. M., Baum, S. R., & Gracco, V. L. (2019). The relationship between speech perceptual discrimination and speech production in Parkinson's disease. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research, 62(12), 4256-4268.
Supporting Research: Reference 5: Abur, D., Lester-Smith, R. A., Daliri, A., Lupiani, A. A., Guenther, F. H., & Stepp, C. E. (2018). Sensorimotor adaptation of voice fundamental frequency in Parkinson's disease. PLoS One, 13(1), e0191839.
Learning Objectives:
As a result of this presentation, the participant will be able to list the features of voice that indicate hypokinetic dysarthria.
As a result of this presentation, the participant will be able to identify the correlations between the intelligibility, loudness, and pitch perception of speech produced by individuals with Parkinson's disease.
As a result of this presentation, the participant will be able to distinguish the primary acoustic markers that influence the listener’s perception of disordered voice.