Effects of altered sensorimotor function of the tongue on spectral characteristics of sibilants /s, z/.

Abstract

Acoustic characteristics of sibilant sounds produced by 17 Canadian English-speaking female (6 patients) and male (11 patients) tongue cancer patients were studied. The patients had undergone a tongue resection of the anterior 2/3 of the tongue, and tongue reconstruction with a radial forearm free flap (RFFF). The acoustic data included measurements of the spectral moments (mean, standard deviation, skewness, and kurtosis) of sibilants /s, z/ analyzed from speech samples (stimulus sentences and Zoo Passage) which were recorded before the tongue resection, and 1 month, 6 months, and 12 months after the resection with RFFF reconstruction. Primarily, the tongue reconstruction with RFFF was found to result in temporary changes on the spectral characteristics such that speech output was found to approach the pre-operative speech quality over the 1-year period. In addition, RFFF reconstruction of the tongue was found to have some gender-specific effects in the acoustic characteristics analyzed. However, there was variability between patients, indicating individual compensatory and adaptive mechanisms for the altered sensorimotor function of the tongue following tongue reconstruction with RFFF. [The protocol for this study has been approved by the Health Research Ethics Board (HREB) of the University of Alberta (Edmonton, AB, Canada).]