• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.8 no.3
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• pp.61-66
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• 2016

The purpose of this study is to examine the speaking rate(overall speaking rate and articulatory rate) of Parkinson's disease patients with palilalia(PDP). Palilalia is traditionally characterized by not only compulsive repetitions of words and phrases, but also by increased rate of speech based on auditory perception. Since Souques(1908) first characterized palilalia as fast speech rate from the perspective of auditory perception, few studies have evaluated PDP speech using acoustic methods. To compare the speech rate between PDP and normal subjects, we included five PDP and eight control subjects(age over 55), as well as the date acquired under reading tasks(standardized Korean paragraph). The difference in median of the overall speaking rate was not statically significant between the PDP group(median 5.25, IQR 1.30) and normal group(median 4.76, IQR 0.71). The PDP, however, had a significantly higher syllables per second on the articulatory rate(median 6.60, IQR 1.04) than normal subjects(median 5.60, IQR 0.52). Results indicated no differences in pause over 250msec and disfluency duration between the two groups. To provide useful insight into PDP speech, multiple levels of analysis should be employed.