Severity Of Speech Impairment Research Articles

Long-term results of combined use of speech therapy and osteopathic correction in 5–6 year old children with dysarthria

Introduction. Dysarthria is a disorder of motor dynamics, which manifests itself in oral speech in the form of illegibility and indistinctness. Also motor realization is impaired, the mobility of the organs of speech (soft palate, tongue, lips) is limited, and so articulation is difficult. Correction of dysarthria only with the help of exercises with a speech therapist is not always effective enough; therefore, there is a constant search for methods that would make it possible to solve speech therapy problems more efficiently and in a shorter time. In this regard, there is great interest in osteopathic correction. The somatic dysfunctions and the results of osteopathic correction of children with dysarthria are described in sufficient detail in the available literary, but only for the end of treatment. The question of preservation of the achieved osteopathic correction results is practically not covered.Aim is to study the long-term results of osteopathic correction of somatic dysfunctions in children aged 5–6 years with dysarthria.Materials and methods. The study involved children with an established diagnosis of dysarthria at the age of 5–6 years. The study participants were divided into the control (15 people) and the main (26 people) groups. The participants in the control group received speech therapy, the participants in the main group received speech therapy and osteopathic correction. The logopaedic, osteopathic and neurological examinations were performed at the start of the study. The logopaedic examination was repeated 12 months after the completion of the correction. The osteopathic examination was repeated immediately after the completion of the correction, after 6 and 12 months. The neurological examination was repeated 6 and 12 months after the completion of the correction.Results. During the study of the long-term results of the correction performed in the both groups, there was a positive trend in several indicators characterizing the severity of speech impairment, including impaired speech pronunciation and dysarthria. In the main group, the dynamics was statistically significantly (p<0,05) more pronounced than in the control group. In the main group, there was a statistically significant (p<0,05) decrease in the severity of global and regional somatic dysfunctions, as well as a decrease in the detection frequency of local disorders of the craniosacral system and local visceral dysfunctions. Also in the main group there was a significant (p<0,05) decrease in the detection frequency of disorders of several indicators characterizing neurological status, including such indicators as convergence, facial symmetry, pharyngeal reflex, neck muscle tension, Romberg posture, local soreness, maskiness, the location of the tongue in the center, the condition of the muscles of the floor of the mouth, the tension of the muscles of the neck, fi nger-nose test.Conclusion. The study demonstrated not only the clinical efficacy of the combined use of osteopathic correction and speech therapy, but also the preservation of the achieved results according to the follow-up evaluation data. The obtained results make it possible to recommend the inclusion of osteopathic correction in the complex correction of dysarthria in preschool children.

A machine learning perspective on the emotional content of Parkinsonian speech

Patients with Parkinson's disease (PD) have distinctive voice patterns, often perceived as expressing sad emotion. While this characteristic of Parkinsonian speech has been supported through the perspective of listeners, where both PD and healthy control (HC) subjects repeat the same speaking tasks, it has never been explored through a machine learning modelling approach. Our work provides an objective evaluation of this characteristic of the PD speech, by building a transfer learning system to assess how the PD pathology affects the sadness perception. To do so we introduce a Mixture-of-Experts (MoE) architecture for speech emotion recognition designed to be transferable across datasets. Firstly, by relying on publicly available emotional speech corpora, we train the MoE model and then we use it to quantify perceived sadness in never seen before PD and matched HC speech recordings. To build our models (experts), we extracted spectral features of the voicing parts of speech and we trained a gradient boosting decision trees model in each corpus to predict happiness vs. sadness. MoE predictions are created by weighting each expert's prediction according to the distance between the new sample and the expert-specific training samples. The MoE approach systematically infers more negative emotional characteristics in PD speech than in HC. Crucially, these judgments are related to the disease severity and the severity of speech impairment in the PD patients: the more impairment, the more likely the speech is to be judged as sad. Our findings pave the way towards a better understanding of the characteristics of PD speech and show how publicly available datasets can be used to train models that provide interesting insights on clinical data.

Additional evidence for a therapeutic effect of dextromethorphan/quinidine on bulbar motor function in patients with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis: A quantitative speech analysis.

AimsA recent double‐blind placebo‐controlled crossover 70‐day trial demonstrated that a fixed combination of dextromethorphan and quinidine (DM/Q) improves speech and swallowing function in most patients with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis. In this study, a subset of participants, many of whom did not substantially improve while on DM/Q, were re‐evaluated using computer‐based speech analyses and expert clinician ratings of the overall severity of speech impairment.MethodsSpeech samples were recorded from the subset of 10 patients at four visits made at approximately 30‐day intervals. The recordings were analysed by automated computer‐based analysis of speech pausing patterns. Severity of speech impairment was rated by three experienced speech‐language pathologists using direct magnitude estimation. Scores on patient‐reported and clinician‐administered scales of bulbar motor involvement were obtained at each visit.ResultsThe effects of DM/Q were detected on several of the objective speech measures, including total pause duration (s) (Cohen's d = 0.73, 95% confidence interval (CI) –1.70, 0.24), pause time (%) (d = 0.77, 95% CI –1.75, 0.21), and mean speech event duration (s) (d = 0.52, 95% CI –0.44, 1.47), but not on clinician ratings of speech or the speech components of the self‐report or clinician‐administered scales.ConclusionsThese findings suggest that even patients with modest improvement while on DM/Q may experience quantifiable improvements in speech when assessed using sensitive and objective measures. This study provides additional evidence of the positive impact of DM/Q on one or more of the neural systems that control bulbar motor function and production of speech.

Phenotypic variability in Angelman syndrome: comparison among different deletion classes and between deletion and UPD subjects.

Angelman syndrome (AS) can result from either a 15q11-q13 deletion (del), paternal uniparental disomy (UPD), imprinting, or UBE3A mutations. Here, we describe the phenotypic and behavioral variability detected in 49 patients with different classes of deletions and nine patients with UPD. Diagnosis was made by methylation pattern analysis of exon 1 of the SNRPN-SNURF gene and by microsatellite profiling of loci within and outside the 15q11-q13 region. There were no major phenotypic differences between the two main classes (BP1-BP3; BP2-BP3) of AS deletion patients, except for the absence of vocalization, more prevalent in patients with BP1-BP3 deletions, and for the age of sitting without support, which was lower in patients with BP2-BP3 deletions. Our data suggest that gene deletions (NIPA1, NIPA2, CYF1P1, GCP5) mapped to the region between breakpoints BP1 and BP2 may be involved in the severity of speech impairment, since all BP1-BP3 deletion patients showed complete absence of vocalization, while 38.1% of the BP2-BP3 deletion patients were able to pronounce syllabic sounds, with doubtful meaning. Compared to UPD patients, deletion patients presented a higher incidence of swallowing disorders (73.9% del x 22.2% UPD) and hypotonia (73.3% del x 28.57% UPD). In addition, children with UPD showed better physical growth, fewer or no seizures, a lower incidence of microcephaly, less ataxia and higher cognitive skills. As a consequence of their milder or less typical phenotype, AS may remain undiagnosed, leading to an overall underdiagnosis of the disease.

Speech impairment and literacy difficulties: Underlying links

AbstractDespite clinical observation of the problems in emergent literacy experienced by unintelligible children, there are conflicting data about the possible relationship of expressive speech problems to literacy acquisition. Several confounding factors may explain the inconsistency in results across studies. Potential confounds include specificity and severity of speech impairment, age of participants, and pattern of speech errors. It was hypothesised that the presence of nondevelopmental speech errors can be considered a symptom of a breakdown at the level of processing phonological information that has an impact on both speech and literacy development. A cohort of 21 specifically speech-impaired children entering Year 1 at school was selected and classified into subgroups based on pattern of speech errors. Phonological awareness measures were administered early in Year 1 and literacy measures in Year 3. The results confirmed thot the presence of nondevelopmental speech errors predicted poorer phonological awareness skills and weaker literacy outcomes, particularly spelling.

Features of developmental dyspraxia in the general speech-impaired population?

A typical clinical population with speech impairment was investigated to determinethe extent of the presence of features of developmental dyspraxia and itsinteraction between the severity of impairment. Thirty diagnostic features ofdevelopmental dyspraxia were identified from the post-1981 literature and twoscales of severity were devised. First the severity of these 30 features was measured(feature severity rating, FSR), and secondly severity of speech impairment wasbased on percentage of consonants correct (PCC). Using these features andseverity ratings a retrospective file audit was conducted of 50 paediatric clientsaged 2–8 years with impaired articulation or phonology. It was found that manycharacteristics regarded as diagnostic for developmental dyspraxia occur in thegeneral speech-impaired population. The relationship between the variables wasanalysed, and support was found for the hypotheses that: (a) there is a relationshipbetween the number of dyspraxic features expressed and the severity of impairmentof speech production and (b) developmental dyspraxia is not characterizedby severe impairment, but may occur in a range of severities from mild to severe.

Abstracts of Literature

Abstracts of Literature

Speech-induced cerebral metabolic activation reflects recovery from aphasia

Six stroke patients with clinically significant aphasia were studied 4 weeks and again 12–18 months after their first left hemispheric ictus. The regional cerebral metabolic rate of glucose (rCMRglc) was measured repeatedly by PET at rest and during word repetition, and severity of speech impairment was assessed by a neuropsychologic test battery. The patterns of speech-associated activation of glucose metabolism were related to improvement in language performance as measured by the Token test. Three patients experienced significant recovery from aphasia (Token test: 47 to 3, 45 to 12, and 37 to 5 points, respectively), whereas 3 patients had poor outcome (Token test: from 48 to 45, and from 47 to 39 and 24, respectively). Good recovery was related to activation of left hemispheric speech areas surrounding the infarct, especially left superior temporal gyrus. In contrast, the 3 patients with persistent aphasia showed rCMRglc recruitment in right hemispheric regions and were unable to activate left hemispheric speech areas on follow-up. These results indicate that favorable outcome is related to partial sparing of speech areas of the dominant hemisphere that can be (re-) activated. Predominant recruitment of contralateral areas is not efficacious for a considerable recovery from aphasia. It rather indicates unspecific involvement of widespread networks in the effort to perform a complex task. © 1997 Elsevier Science B.v. All rights reserved.