Abstract
In the present study, we investigated if individuals with neurogenic speech sound impairments of three types, Parkinson’s dysarthria, apraxia of speech, and aphasic phonological impairment, accommodate their speech to the natural speech rhythm of an auditory model, and if so, whether the effect is more significant after hearing metrically regular sentences as compared to those with an irregular pattern. This question builds on theories of rhythmic entrainment, assuming that sensorimotor predictions of upcoming events allow humans to synchronize their actions with an external rhythm. To investigate entrainment effects, we conducted a sentence completion task relating participants’ response latencies to the spoken rhythm of the prime heard immediately before. A further research question was if the perceived rhythm interacts with the rhythm of the participants’ own productions, i.e., the trochaic or iambic stress pattern of disyllabic target words. For a control group of healthy speakers, our study revealed evidence for entrainment when trochaic target words were preceded by regularly stressed prime sentences. Persons with Parkinson’s dysarthria showed a pattern similar to that of the healthy individuals. For the patient groups with apraxia of speech and with phonological impairment, considerably longer response latencies with differing patterns were observed. Trochaic target words were initiated with significantly shorter latencies, whereas the metrical regularity of prime sentences had no consistent impact on response latencies and did not interact with the stress pattern of the target words to be produced. The absence of an entrainment in these patients may be explained by the more severe difficulties in initiating speech at all. We discuss the results in terms of clinical implications for diagnostics and therapy in neurogenic speech disorders.
Highlights
Rhythm characterizes many kinds of human activities
Following the above mentioned auditory priming experiment with dysarthric speakers [75], we developed a similar paradigm to investigate if articulation of patients with apraxia of speech (AOS) and patients with phonological impairment (PI) benefit from auditory priming by speech with a regular rhythm [76]
Thirty-six persons with three types of neurogenic speech sound impairment participated (16 female; mean age 62 years, range 30–83, s.d. = 13.7): twelve patients were diagnosed with apraxia of speech (AOS), all of whom had varying degrees of coexisting aphasia; twelve participants presented aphasic phonological impairments (PI) without AOS; and twelve individuals had hypokinetic dysarthria associated with Parkinson’s disease (PD)
Summary
Rhythm characterizes many kinds of human activities. The movement sequences of many physical activities such as swimming, hurdling, or fencing have typical rhythmic structures. Rhythm is conveyed by a beat structure characterized by a more or less regular sequence of different tone durations and pauses [1]. If a piece of music is based on a regular rhythm, people can dance or clap to the rhythm while listening. Underlying this observation is the ability to entrain body movements to music, i.e., the ability to synchronize with the beat [2,3,4,5,6,7]. It is assumed that children are sensitive to rhythm from an early age [8,9,10]
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