Abstract
Patients with Parkinson's disease (PD) usually reveal speech disorders and, among other symptoms, the alteration of speech rhythm. The purpose of this study is twofold: (1) to test the validity of two acoustic parameters—%V, vowel percentage and VtoV, the mean interval between two consecutive vowel onset points—for the identification of rhythm variation in early-stage PD speech and (2) to analyze the effect of PD on speech rhythm in two different speaking tasks: reading passage and monolog. A group of 20 patients with early-stage PD was involved in this study and compared with 20 age- and sex-matched healthy controls (HCs). The results of the acoustic analysis confirmed that %V is a useful cue for early-stage PD speech characterization, having significantly higher values in the production of patients with PD than the values in HC speech. A simple speaking task, such as the reading task, was found to be more effective than spontaneous speech in the detection of rhythmic variations.
Highlights
Parkinson’s disease (PD) is recognized as the second most common neurodegenerative disorder after Alzheimer’s disease, with a point prevalence ranging from 0.25 to 4% between the age of 65 and 80 (de Lau and Breteler, 2006)
Impairment in articulating vowels and consonants, as a consequence of the hypokinesia and the resulting decreased amplitude of motility of the lips, tongue, and jaw, has been widely documented in PD (Forrest et al, 1989; Robertson and Hammerstadt, 1996). It has speech difficulties according to Item 3.1 (Speech) Rhythm in Early-Stage Parkinson’s Disease been shown that a reduction in the vowel space area (VSA) of patients with PD can be predictive of the progression of disease (Skodda et al, 2012), and the degree of imprecision of vowel articulation has been observed in the speaking task of sentence repetition (Sapir et al, 2007, 2010), reading passage (Skodda et al, 2011), and sustained prolongation of single vowels (Eliasova et al, 2013)
Rusz et al (2013) analyzed the vowel articulation across various speaking tasks in a group of 20 Czech patients with early-stage PD prior to pharmacotherapy and found a lowered VSA and abnormalities in formant centralizations measured by the Vowel Articulation Index (VAI) across all speaking tasks with the exception of sustained phonation and with the greatest alteration during spontaneous speech
Summary
Parkinson’s disease (PD) is recognized as the second most common neurodegenerative disorder after Alzheimer’s disease, with a point prevalence ranging from 0.25 to 4% between the age of 65 and 80 (de Lau and Breteler, 2006). Impairment in articulating vowels and consonants, as a consequence of the hypokinesia and the resulting decreased amplitude of motility of the lips, tongue, and jaw, has been widely documented in PD (Forrest et al, 1989; Robertson and Hammerstadt, 1996) It has Speech Rhythm in Early-Stage Parkinson’s Disease been shown that a reduction in the vowel space area (VSA) of patients with PD can be predictive of the progression of disease (Skodda et al, 2012), and the degree of imprecision of vowel articulation has been observed in the speaking task of sentence repetition (Sapir et al, 2007, 2010), reading passage (Skodda et al, 2011), and sustained prolongation of single vowels (Eliasova et al, 2013). It has Speech Rhythm in Early-Stage Parkinson’s Disease been shown that a reduction in the vowel space area (VSA) of patients with PD can be predictive of the progression of disease (Skodda et al, 2012), and the degree of imprecision of vowel articulation has been observed in the speaking task of sentence repetition (Sapir et al, 2007, 2010), reading passage (Skodda et al, 2011), and sustained prolongation of single vowels (Eliasova et al, 2013). Rusz et al (2013) analyzed the vowel articulation across various speaking tasks in a group of 20 Czech patients with early-stage PD prior to pharmacotherapy and found a lowered VSA and abnormalities in formant centralizations measured by the Vowel Articulation Index (VAI) across all speaking tasks with the exception of sustained phonation and with the greatest alteration during spontaneous speech
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