• Speech Sciences
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• v.15 no.4
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• pp.159-170
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• 2008

The purpose of this study was to find out the ability of coordination of the articulatory motor and the ability of control of the respiration and laryngeal for spastic dysarthria by acoustic analysis. The sustained of vowel /a/ and repetition of syllable /pa/ in 15 normal and 10 spastic dysarthria were measured. Multi-Speech, MDVP, and MSP were used for data recording and analysis. As a result, the mean DDK rate in the spastic group was significantly slower than in the normal. The maximum phonation time in the spastic group ($4.80{\pm}1.94$) was shorter than in the normal ($11.20{\pm}3.72$). The DDKjit in the spastic group was significantly higher than in the normal. The DDKsla was reduced in the spastic group. The mean syllable duration in the spastic group (146.2ms) was significantly longer than in the normal (75.8ms). The mean energy was reduced in the spastic group. The range of Fo was greater than in the normal. The frequency perturbation (jitter, vFo) and amplitude perturbation (shimmer, vAm) were higher than in the normal group. The NHR was higher than in the normal group. The parameters of this were significantly difference between the spastic dysarthria and the normal (p<0.05). Finally, the spastic dysarthria has short respiration, slow speech rate, and voice quality problem. The these results will help to establish a plan and the intervention of treatment.

• Speech Sciences
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• v.2
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• pp.67-88
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• 1997

The aim of this study is to develop an assessment program of speech rehabilitation for children having some language and speech disorders. Patients of dysarthria, tonsillectomy, tonsilhypertrophy, and nasal obstruction were selected for this experimental clinical phonetic study. Formant variations ($F_1\;&\;F_2$) show pre- and post-operation differences in tonsillectomy and cleft palate patients. Nasal formants ($NF_1\;&\;NF_2$) show pre- and post-operation differences in nasal obstruction. The articulation reaction time (ART) as a parameter was used to assess Voice Onset Time(VOT). It was shown longer duration for hypokinetic dysarthria and shorter for atoxic dysarthria.. The diadochokinetic rate was measured by Visi-pitch. Lower diadochokinetic rate appeared to spastic and dysarthria in comparison with the control group. It was shown that the nasalance of tonsilhypertrophy, nasal obstruction, and cleft palate patients was seen to increase after operation. In addition, the assessment of nasality can be measured only by simple vowels such as /a/ and /i/.

• Speech Sciences
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• v.7 no.2
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• pp.19-35
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• 2000

Speech evaluation and treatment planning for the patients with articulation disorders have traditionally been based on perceptual judgement by speech pathologists. Recently, various computerized speech analysis systems have been developed and commonly used in clinical settings to obtain the objective and quantitative data and specific treatment strategies. 10 dysarthric children (6 neurogenic and 4 functional dysarthria) participated in this experiment. Speech evaluation of dysarthria was performed in two ways; first, the acoustic analysis by Visi-Pitch and a Computerized Speech Lab and second, the perceptual scoring of phonetic errors rates in 100 word test. The results of the initial evaluation served as primary guidlines for the indivisualized treatment planning of each patient's speech problems. After mean treatment period of 5 months, the follow-up data of both dysarthric groups showed increased maximum phonation time, increased alternative motion rate and decreased occurrence of articulatory deviation. The changes of acoustic data and therapeutic effects were more prominent in children with dysarthria due to neurologic causes than with functional dysarthria. Three cases including their pre- and post treatment data were illustrated in detail.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.8 no.3
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• pp.51-59
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• 2016

The purpose of present study is to examine differences between habitual speech (HS) and clear speech (CS) in individuals with mild dysarthria. Twelve speakers with mild dysarthria and twelve healthy control speakers read sentences in two speaking styles. Formant and intensity related values, triangular area, and center of gravity of /a/, /i/, and /u/ were measured. In addition, formant-ratio variables such as vowel space area(VSA), vowel articulatory index (VAI), formant centralization ratio (FCR) and F2i/F1u ratio (F2 ratio) were calculated. The results of repeated-measures ANOVA showed a significant difference in F2 of vowel /i/ and F2 energy of vowel /a/ between groups. Regarding formant energy, F2 energy of vowel /a/ were observed as meaningful variables between speaking styles. There were significant speaking style-by-group interactions for F2 energy of vowel /a/. These findings indicated that current parameters could discriminate healthy group and mild dysarthria group meaningfully and that speaker with dysarthria had larger clear speech benefit than healthy talkers. We also claim that various acoustic changes of clear speech may contribute to improving vowel intelligibility.

• PNF and Movement
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• v.16 no.3
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• pp.475-484
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• 2018

Purpose: The aim of the present study was to investigate the effect of a PNF orofacial exercise program on diadochokinesis in subacute stroke patients with dysarthria. Methods: Thirteen subacute stroke inpatients with dysarthria were recruited for the study. All participants were randomly assigned to two groups: an experimental group (n=7) and a control group (n=6). The experimental group performed a PNF orofacial exercise program, and the control group carried out an orofacial self-exercise. Both groups received the treatments 30 minutes per day, 5 days per week, for 4 weeks. The outcome measures were assessed before and after the intervention, including an alternating motion rate (AMR) and sequential motion rate for diadochokinesis. Results: After the intervention, both groups showed significant improvement in diadochokinesis (p<0.05). In the change values for both groups, the experimental group showed a more significant improvement than the control group did in /pə/ of AMR (p<0.05). Conclusion: These findings suggest that PNF orofacial exercise programs may have positive effects on the improvement of diadochokinesis in subacute stroke patients with dysarthria.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.10 no.4
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• pp.163-171
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• 2018

A mixed dysarthria with combinations of hypokinetic, ataxic, and spastic components is a common clinical feature of multiple system atrophy (MSA). Due to the rapid progress of dysarthria after diagnosis, people with MSA experience difficulty with verbal communication, which eventually affects their quality of life negatively. In this study, SPEAK $OUT!^{(R)}$, an intensive 1:1 treatment of dysarthria for improving functional communicative ability, was provided to twelve people with MSA. To evaluate the efficacy of SPEAK $OUT!^{(R)}$ in people with MSA, aerodynamic, acoustic, and perceptual analyses were conducted. Pre-and post-therapy data included maximum phonation time, vocal intensity, and fundamental frequency during /a/ sustained phonation and passage reading; frequency range between high /a/ and low /a/ phonation; jitter, shimmer, and HNR for vocal quality; speech rate during passage reading; and perceptual evaluation scores for articulation precision and intonation. The participants achieved statistically significant improvement in vocal intensity, pitch range, vocal quality, speech rate, and speech intelligibility. In conclusion, SPEAK $OUT!^{(R)}$ is a feasible treatment for people with MSA to efficaciously improve their speech ability.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.3 no.4
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• pp.117-124
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• 2011

This study investigated the effects of the types of noise and signal to noise ratios (SNRs) on speech intelligibility of an adult with dysartrhia. Speech intelligibility was judged by 48 naive listeners using a word transcription task. Repeated measures design was used with the types of noise (multi-talker babble/environmental noise) and SNRs (0, +10 dB, +20 dB) as within-subject factors. The dependent measure was the percentage of correctly transcribed words. Results revealed that two main effects were statistically significant. Listeners performed significantly worse in the multi-talker babble condition than the environmental noise condition, and they performed significantly better at higher levels of SNRs. The current results suggested that the multi-talker babble and lower level of SNRs decreased the speech intelligibility of adults with dysarthria, and speech-language pathologists should consider environmental factors such as the types of noise and SNRs in evaluating speech intelligibility of adults with dysarthria.

• Journal of TMJ Balancing Medicine
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• v.1 no.1
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• pp.19-22
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• 2011

Objectives: Therapeutic effect of Yinyang Balancing Appliance of functional cerebrospinal therapy (FCST) for meridian and neurologic yinyang balance was observed in dysarthria with dystonia cases. Methods: Two dysarthria with dystonia cases were managed with the Yinyang Balancing Appliance on temporomandibular joint (TMJ), combined with acupuncture. Clinical outcome measurement was based on subjective measures and clinical observations. Results: The patients showed positive changes even after the initial treatment and this effect maintained over the follow-up period. Conclusions: Although it is not clear the effect is a sustaining or temporary in its nature, a positive effect was observed and further clinical and biological research on FCST is expected.

• ETRI Journal
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• v.40 no.5
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• pp.643-652
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• 2018

Dysarthria is a degenerative disorder of the central nervous system that affects the control of articulation and pitch; therefore, it affects the uniqueness of sound produced by the speaker. Hence, dysarthric speaker recognition is a challenging task. In this paper, a feature-extraction method based on deep belief networks is presented for the task of identifying a speaker suffering from dysarthria. The effectiveness of the proposed method is demonstrated and compared with well-known Mel-frequency cepstral coefficient features. For classification purposes, the use of a multi-layer perceptron neural network is proposed with two structures. Our evaluations using the universal access speech database produced promising results and outperformed other baseline methods. In addition, speaker identification under both text-dependent and text-independent conditions are explored. The highest accuracy achieved using the proposed system is 97.3%.

• Speech Sciences
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• v.11 no.4
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• pp.185-195
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• 2004

Spastic dysarthria is a motor speech disorder produced by a damage to the direct (pyramidal) and indirect (extrapyramidal) pathways of the central nervous system. This study attempted to determine the influences of the severity of spastic dysarthria on the stability of voice. A sustained /a/, /a/ produced at the beginning of a sentence and at the end of the sentence were analyzed. The Praat 4.0.51 was used for analysis. The results showed a significant difference between the severe spastic dysarthric group and normal group matched by age and sex at the beginning and the end of the sentence. In addition, the severe group showed a significant difference between the first /a/ and the second /a/ at the end of sentence.