The role of respiratory/phonatory training and acoustic analysis in normalizing speaking rate in a case of scanning speech

Abstract

In this single case study, we report the role of respiratory/phonatory training in normalizing speaking rate in a patient with significant ataxic dysarthria, specifically, scanning speech, two years post a closed head injury from an MVA. The patient passed bilateral hearing screening, and scored 30/30 on the Mini-Mental State Exam, AQ of 97.2 on the Western Aphasia Battery-Revised and 58/60 on the Boston Naming Test. The initial speech analysis revealed the following: perceptually, the speech was slow with equal and excess stress and significant phonatory-prosodic insufficiency. Acoustically, the syllable duration was increased and equalized with very little variation in fundamental frequency or intensity. The phonatory-prosodic insufficiency was identified as the underlying deficit and targeted, which resulted in significant improvement in both overall speech intelligibility and naturalness of speech in seven weeks. Both self-rating and acoustic analyses were used throughout as means of feedback which contributed to the success of the treatment. The final acoustic analysis indicated normal syllable duration and speech prosody in spontaneous speech. The pre- and post-treatment audio clips will be used to accompany the acoustic analysis. The role of acoustic analysis in treatment of phonatory-prosodic insufficiency and its implication in dysarthria management in general will be discussed.