The current study examined the acoustic cues to lexical stress produced by speakers with spastic dysarthria and healthy control speakers. Of particular interest was the effect of stress location, which represented whether lexical stress was on the first vs. second syllable of the word. Results suggest that speakers with dysarthria convey lexical stress differently than do control speakers. The ...

Reduced speech intelligibility has been observed in Parkinson’s disease (PD), ataxic dysarthria, multiple sclerosis (MS) and in individuals who have suffered a cerebral vascular accident (CVA). Data support the effectiveness of the Lee Silverman Voice Treatment (LSVT) on the improvement of vocal function and speech intelligibility in PD. Today, only a small percentage of patients with chronic n...

This study was designed to determine the effect of stimulated vocal loudness on nasalance in individuals with various dysarthria subtypes. Thirty participants produced three stimulated levels of vocal loudness while reading a nonnasal passage. Data included dysarthria classification, vocal sound pressure level, nasalance, and listener perception of nasality. There was not a predictable relation...

BACKGROUND Hyperkinetic dysarthria is characterized by abnormal involuntary movements affecting respiratory, phonatory, and articulatory structures impacting speech and deglutition. Speech-language pathologists (SLPs) play an important role in the evaluation and management of dysarthria and dysphagia. This review describes the standard clinical evaluation and treatment approaches by SLPs for ad...

FOLFIRINOX is a standard chemotherapeutic regimen for patients with advanced pancreatic cancer who have a good performance status. In this study, we present the case of a 64-year-old male who developed dysarthria following FOLFIRINOX treatment, and review all four cases of dysarthria encountered among the nine patients who received this treatment in our hospital. In all cases, dysarthria occurr...

'Scanning speech' has been used as a description of a prominent characteristic of the dysarthria of multiple sclerosis (MS) as well as of ataxic dysarthria in general. It is thought to be measurable as equalized syllable durations. There are seemingly contradictory prosodic-temporal characteristics of ataxic dysarthria: perceptually characterised as prosodic excess as well as phonatory-prosodic...

Although tongue twisters have been widely use to study speech production in healthy speakers, few studies have employed this methodology for individuals with speech impairment. The present study compared tongue twister errors produced by adults with dysarthria and age-matched healthy controls. Eight speakers (four female, four male; mean age = 54.5 years) with spastic (mixed-spastic) dysarthria...

Purpose This study aimed to improve understanding of speech characteristics associated with dysarthria in children with cerebral palsy by analyzing segmental and global formant measures in single-word and sentence contexts. Method Ten 5-year-old children with cerebral palsy and dysarthria and 10 age-matched, typically developing children participated in this study. Vowel space area and second...

Reduced speech intelligibility is a barrier to effective communication for many children with cerebral palsy (CP). Many variables may impact intelligibility, yet little research attention has sought to quantify these variables. This study examined the influence of sentence characteristics on intelligibility in two groups of children with CP (those with and without dysarthria) and typically-deve...

Purpose Generalization of perceptual learning has received limited attention in listener adaptation studies with dysarthric speech. This study investigated whether adaptation to a talker with dysarthria could be predicted by the nature of the listener's prior familiarization experience, specifically similarity of perceptual features, and level of intelligibility. Method Following an intelligi...