Fundamental frequency patterns in cerebral palsied speech

Abstract

Fundamental frequency (F 0 ) contours provide an acoustic measure that correlates closely with speech intonation. Abnormal intonation patterns have been described as a common feature of dysarthric speech of various origins, including cerebral palsy. However, acoustic descriptions of intonation in dysarthria associated with cerebral palsy are difficult to find. Hence a small exploratory investigation was conducted to describe fundamental frequency patterns of read sentences for three speakers with cerebral palsy and compare them with patterns for normal speakers. Results showed that F 0 variation (as measured by normalized range of F 0 ) for two of the cerebral palsied speakers overlapped that for the normal speakers, and was marginally lower for one cerebral palsied speaker. Fundamental frequency contours for the cerebral palsied speakers appeared to have characteristics that generally were different from the patterns for the normal speakers, and also were different from each other. More systematic studies involving acoustic speech measures related to prosodic disturbance will be required to answer questions raised by this study about the nature of intonation in cerebral palsy.