Speech Rate and Pause Characteristics in Patients with Parkinson's Disease

파킨슨병 환자의 말 속도와 쉼 특성

The purpose of this study is to investigate the speech rate characteristics (whole speech rate, articulation speech rate, and articulation percentage) and the pause characteristics (pause duration, pause frequency, and pause percentage) of Korean-speaking patients with idiopathic Parkinson's disease (referred to as IPD hereafter). The study aims first to examine the differences between the patient group with IPD and the other group without IPD concerning those measurements, and secondly to investigate the relevant measurements of the two groups following the sentence length changes. There were two groups of subjects in this study. The first group consisted of 7 subjects between the ages of 50 and 60 who were diagnosed as IPD with mild severity, and the second group consisted of 13 subjects without IPD who matched the age and gender of those in the first group. Those two groups were asked to read 8 different sentences in length at habitual speed. Speech rate and pause characteristics of the two groups were measured and compared each other. The followings results were observed. First, in a study of speech rate characteristics, the whole speech rate and the articulation speech rate of the patient group scored within the normal range, which is same as the group without IPD. On the other hand, with regard to the pause characteristics, differences between two groups were shown; the patient group had shorter pause duration, lower pause frequency, lower pause percentage, and higher articulation percentage. Secondly, in a study of relevant measurements following the sentence length, both groups showed a tendency for whole speech rate and articulation rate to increase as the length of the sentence increased, but the result of pause characteristics showed a difference between two groups. While the group without IPD showed a longer pause duration, higher pause frequency, and higher pause percentage as the length of sentences increases, no differences were shown among the patient group concerning the length of sentences. This study suggests a result that the patients with IPD of mild severity retained a normal speech rate and examined pause characteristics of the patient group which showed a different result from the group without IPD in terms of quality. Future studies on the speech rate and pause characteristics of Korean-speaking patients with IPD in various severities.