Articulatory kinematics of bilateral stops in speakers with Parkinson’s disease: Preliminary data

Abstract

The current study presents data on articulatory kinematics of bilateral stop production in speakers with Parkinson’s disease (PD) for the long term purpose of developing a segment-specific articulatory profile of people with PD. As an initial step, we examined bilateral stops because of their relatively high frequency of occurrence and involvement of articulatory motions associated with surrounding vowels (Kim, Berry, and Kuo, 2017; Mines, Hanson, and Shoup, 1978). A total of 10 speakers (5 speakers with PD and 5 speakers without PD) were asked to read The Caterpillar passage in a conversational voice. An electromagnetic articulatography system (Wave, NDI) was used to track the motion of the tongue (tongue front and back) and lip (upper lip and lower lip) during bilabial stop productions (from the onset of stop closure interval to the onset of the following vocalic nuclei). The results will be presented regarding the (1) range (e.g., 2D distance) and (2) timing (e.g., the timing of minimum lip aperture) of articulatory movements focusing on group comparisons between the two speaker groups, people with and without PD.