Abstract
The purpose of this study is to analyze the speech duration in Korean-speaking aphasics. Five patients with nonfluent aphasia (2 with traumatic brain injury and 3 with strokes) and five normal adults participated in this experiment. The mean age in patients with nonfluent aphasia was $45.8\pm2.3$ years and $47.4\pm2.3$ years for the normal adults. The Computerized Speech Lab was used to evaluate the acoustic characteristics of the subjects. Voice onset time, vowel duration, total duration, hold and consonant duration were evaluated for the monosyllabic and the polysyllabic words. The patients with nonfluent aphasia did not show the voicing bar on hold area, however, it was seen in the normal persons in the intervocalic position. Explosion duration of glottalized stops in the intervocalic position was significantly prolonged in nonfluent aphasics in comparison with the normal persons. This suggestes that the laryngeal adjustment is disturbed in these patients. Consonant duration, vowel duration, and total duration of the polysyllabic words were significantly longer in the patients with nonfluent aphasia than those of the normal persons. These results demonstrate the disturbances in controlling articulatory muscles during sound production in patients with nonfluent aphasia. The objective and quantitative analysis based on the acoustic characteristics of nonfluent aphasics, will be very useful in therapeutic planning and on the the effects of speech therapy.
