Effects of loudness and complex speech on spataial and temporal precision in Parkinson's Disease

The paper presents preliminary results of a speech motor control study of hypokinetic dysarthria in Parkinson's disease (PD). By means of EPG, the tongue contacts of two speakers with PD and two control speakers during the production of target words containing initial /t/ stops were analysed in normal and loud condition as well as in complex sentences. The preliminary results showed no effects of increasing loudness on duration and on the number of tongue contacts in speakers with PD. Furthermore, frication of the stop /p/ to [f] was found for one speaker in the acoustic analysis.casl[1] Alm, P. 2004. Stuttering and the basal ganglia circuits: A critical review of possible relations. JCD 37, 325-369. [2] Dromey, C. Ramig, L.O. 1998. Intentional changes in sound pressure level and rate: Their impacts on measures of respiration, phonation, and articulation. JSLHR 41, 1003-1018. [3] Dromey, C. 2000. Articulatory kinematic in patients with Parkinson disease using different speech treatment approaches. Journal of Medical Speech-Language Pathology 8, 155-161. [4] Kent, R. D., Weismer, G., Kent, J. F., Rosenbek, J. C. 1989. Toward phonetic intelligibility testing in dysarthria. JSHD 54, 482-99. [5] Kleinow, J., Smith, A., Ramig, L.O. 2001. Speech motor stability in idiopathic Parkinson's disease: effects of rate and loudness manipulations. JSLHR 44, 1041-1051. [6] McAuliffe, M. J., Ward, E.C., Murdoch, B.E. 2006. Speech production in Parkinson's disease: I. An electropalatographic investigation of tongue-palate contact patterns. Clinical Linguistics and Phonetics 20, 1- 18. [7] McAuliffe, M. J., Ward, E.C., Murdoch, B.E. 2006. Speech production in Parkinson's disease: II. Acoustic and electropalatographic investigation of sentence, word and segment durations. Clinical Linguistics and Phonetics 20, 19-33. [8] Mooshammer, C., Hoole, P., Geumann, A. (in press). Jaw and order. Language and Speech. [9] Schulman, R. 1989. Articulatory dynamics of loud and normal speech. J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 85, 295-312. [10] Stevens, K.N. 1989. On the quantal nature of speech. Journal of Phonetics 17, 3-45.pub53pu