Comparison of Parkinsonian speech ratings by individuals with Parkinson disease, communication partners, and a trained rater

Abstract

ABSTRACT A majority of individuals with Parkinson disease (PD) experience speech and voice changes as initial signs of the condition, sometimes months or years before the clinical diagnosis of PD. Accurate perception of these changes is, therefore, important for early referral and clinical decision making. Limited studies have examined the general perception abilities of individuals with PD for their speech and neurologically typical speech based on multiple speech dimensions. Therefore, the current study examined self- perception abilities of individuals with PD for their live speech (immediate perception) and recorded neurologically typical speech (playback perception) based on seven speech dimensions (including pitch, pitch variability, loudness, rate, pauses, understandability, and speaker’s physical effort). The current study included 20 participants with PD, 20 communication partners, and a single trained rater as listeners. Results indicated that participants with PD provided significantly higher self-loudness ratings when compared to the trained rater. In addition, participants with PD showed significant differences in ratings for loudness, rate, and understandability for the two neurologically typical speakers when compared to corresponding ratings by their communication partners. Finally, perceptual ratings for speakers’ physical effort had a significant relationship with ratings for speech rate and understandability, thereby suggesting its role in creating listener impressions for parkinsonian speech. Overall, the current study provided evidence for general speech perception deficits among individuals with PD based on live and recorded listening tasks. Further, the study provided evidence for aging and habituation- related factors among communication partners when listening to family members with PD.