How does prosodic deficit impact naïve listeners recognition of emotion? An analysis with speakers affected by Parkinson's disease

Abstract This study aimed to understand the impact of the prosodic deficit in Parkinson's disease (PD) on the communicative effectiveness of vocal expression of emotion. Fourteen patients with PD and 13 healthy control subjects (HC) uttered the phrase "non è possible, non ora" ("It is not possible, not now") six times reading different emotional narrations. Three experts evaluated the PD subjects' vocal production in terms of their communicative effectiveness. The PD patients were divided into two groups: PD+ (with residual effectiveness) and PD− (with impaired effectiveness). The vocal productions were administered to 30 naïve listeners. They were requested to label the emotion they recognized and to make judgments about their communicative effectiveness. The PD speakers were perceived as less effective than the HC speakers in conveying emotions (especially fear and anger). The PD− group was the most impaired in the expression of emotion, suggesting that speech disorders impact differently at the same stage of the disease with varying degrees of severity

Voice treatment in Parkinson’s disease: Patient perspectives

Speech and voice changes are a central feature of the symptom complex of people with Parkinson’s disease (pwPD). Speaking is a social activity involving the pwPD, family, and the wider communicative context. Sensory-motor, cognitive-linguistic, and affective changes in Parkinson’s disease (PD) combine to alter communication, impacting on psycho-social quality-of-life, leading to risks of social withdrawal and increased depression and anxiety. The underlying pathophysiology of speech, voice, and communication difficulties in pwPD is multi-factorial and complex. Sensory-motor changes in the respiratory, phonatory, and articulatory subsystems, underscaling of effort, and central processing problems are further affected by broader cognitive-linguistic difficulties, and non-speech motor deficits. Many studies show that, when pwPD are asked to rate their own voice and how it functions in everyday situations, they show increased voice-related disability and negative impact relative to healthy controls. Voice treatment is integral to improving communication in pwPD. Studies show positive benefits from the perspective of pwPD and carers. Treatment approaches vary from one-to-one to group interventions, a singular focus on increasing loudness to more general voice exercises, and choral singing. The nature and underlying pathophysiology of speech, voice, and communication changes in pwPD are reviewed before exploring the effects of voice treatment programs and pwPD and carer perceptions of their effect. Larger scale, better powered, controlled trials of intervention for voice and speech that measure clinically and socially relevant outcomes are finally underway. Future research should also focus on issues of treatment compliance, practicality (for service delivery and use), and long-term follow-up outcomes. The role of carers in longer-term maintenance represents a further important area of exploration

A cross-linguistic perspective to classification of healthiness of speech in Parkinson's disease

People with Parkinson's disease often experience communication problems. The current cross-linguistic study investigates how listeners' perceptual judgements of speech healthiness are related to the acoustic changes appearing in the speech of people with Parkinson's disease. Accordingly, we report on an online experiment targeting perceived healthiness of speech. We studied the relations between healthiness perceptual judgements and a set of acoustic characteristics of speech in a cross-sectional design. We recruited 169 participants, who performed a classification task judging speech recordings of Dutch speakers with Parkinson's disease and of Dutch control speakers as ‘healthy’ or ‘unhealthy’. The groups of listeners differed in their training and expertise in speech language therapy as well as in their native languages. Such group separation allowed us to investigate the acoustic correlates of speech healthiness without influence of the content of the recordings. We used a Random Forest method to predict listeners' responses. Our findings demonstrate that, independently of expertise and language background, when classifying speech as healthy or unhealthy listeners are more sensitive to speech rate, presence of phonation deficiency reflected by maximum phonation time measurement, and centralization of the vowels. The results indicate that both specifics of the expertise and language background may lead to listeners relying more on the features from either prosody or phonation domains. Our findings demonstrate that more global perceptual judgements of different listeners classifying speech of people with Parkinson's disease may be predicted with sufficient reliability from conventional acoustic features. This suggests universality of acoustic change in speech of people with Parkinson's disease. Therefore, we concluded that certain aspects of phonation and prosody serve as prominent markers of speech healthiness for listeners independent of their first language or expertise. Our findings have outcomes for the clinical practice and real-life implications for subjective perception of speech of people with Parkinson's disease, while information about particular acoustic changes that trigger listeners to classify speech as ‘unhealthy’ can provide specific therapeutic targets in addition to the existing dysarthria treatment in people with Parkinson's disease

Effect of group vocal and singing exercises for individuals with Parkinson's disease, The

2020 Spring.Includes bibliographical references.The majority of individuals with Parkinson's disease (PD) experience voice and speech deficits, collectively called hypokinetic dysarthria; however, treatment outcomes are inconsistent and often unsustainable. The purpose of this study was to replicate the music therapy protocol for hypokinetic dysarthria (MTPHD) completed by Azekawa and LaGasse (2018) in an effort to investigate the effects of a group music therapy treatment for individuals who exhibited voice and speech deficits due to PD. The MTPHD consisted of three neurologic music therapy (NMT) techniques that specifically target voice and speech characteristics. A total of 17 participants with PD completed eight weekly group music therapy sessions. Pretest and posttest measurements were documented for three speech assessments to address vocal function, vocal quality, articulatory control, and connected speech intelligibility. Significant differences were found in vocal quality and the number of inter-word pauses. Positive trends were observed in all other measurements, indicating that music therapy may be a viable treatment option to address hypokinetic dysarthria in persons with PD

Library for Python used for dysarthric speech parameterization

Bakalářská práce je zaměřená na parametrizaci dysartrické řeči. V rámci práce je věnována pozornost metodám analýzy řečového signálu u Parkinsonovy nemoci, moderním parametrizačním technikám, které mají za úkol kvantifikovat poškození motorických aspektů řeči, a implementaci vybraných parametrů v jazyce Python. Hlavním cílem této práce bylo vytvoření knihovny parametrů, která je realizována ve vývojovém prostředí PyCharm.Bachelor thesis is focused on parameterization of dysartoric speech. Attention is paid to methods of Speech Signal Analysis for Parkinson's disease, modern parametrization techniques, which are designed to quantify the damage of motoric aspects of speech and implementation of selected parameters in Python. The main goal of this work was to create a parameter library that is realized in the PyCharm development environment.

Application of statistical analysis of speech in patients with Parkinson's disease

Tato diplomová práce se zabývá zpracováním řečového signálu osob postižených Parkinsonovou nemocí za účelem vytvoření statistického vzorku řečových parametrů, pomocí něhož bude možno rozdělit zkoumané osoby na parkinsoniky a neparkinsoniky. Tento statistický vzorek je tvořen na základě detekce hypokinetické dysartrie u osob postižených Parkinsonovou nemocí. V práci je rozebíráno předzpracování řečového signálu pomocí metody ustřednění a preemfáze a jeho rozdělení na části (segmentace). Následně je popsáno parametrické vyjádření zpracovávaného vzorku pomocí fonačních parametrů, MFCC a PLP koeficientů. Dále jsou rozebírány možnosti statistické analýzy pomocí zmíněného parametrického vyjádření. V přípádě této práce statistická analýza sestává z výpočtu Pearsonova a Spearmanova korelačního koeficientu, vzájemné informace a parametrického Studentova t-testu a neparametrického Mann-Whitneyova U testu. Výsledkem práce je soubor řečových parametrů pro jednotlivé dlouhé české samohlásky, které dokáží dle provedené statistické analýzy nejlépe vyjádřit rozdíl mezi zdravým řečníkem a parkinsonikem. Tyto výsledky mohou napomoci při diagnóze osoby, u níž je podezření na Parkisonovu nemoc.This thesis deals with speech analysis of people who suffer from Parkinson’s disease. Purpose of this thesis is to obtain statistical sample of speech parameters which helps to determine if examined person is suffering from Parkinson’s disease. Statistical sample is based on hypokinetic dysarthria detection. For speech signal pre-processing DC-offset removal and pre-emphasis are used. The next step is to divide signal into frames. Phonation parameters, MFCC and PLP coefficients are used for characterization of framed speech signal. After parametrization the speech signal can be analyzed by statistical methods. For statistical analysis in this thesis Spearman’s and Pearson’s correlation coefficients, mutual information, Mann-Whitney U test and Student’s t-test are used. The thesis results are the groups of speech parameters for individual long czech vowels which are the best indicator of the difference between healthy person and patient suffering from Parkinson’s disease. These result can be helpful in medical diagnosis of a patient.

Changes in speech intelligibility and acoustic distinctiveness along a speech rate continuum in Parkinson’s disease

Asking a person to speak slowly is a common technique in speech therapy for people with Parkinson’s disease (PD). Slowed speaking rates are thought to bring about changes in speech production that make it easier for people with speech impairments associated with PD to be understood, but this is not always the case. Furthermore, research suggests that using faster speech does not necessarily lead to decreases in speech intelligibility for some people with PD. Most studies of rate modification in PD have only included one or two rate adjustments to investigate the relationship between speech rate, intelligibility, and acoustic aspects of speech production. The present study adds to this literature and expands it by eliciting a broader range of speech rates than has previously been studied in order to provide a comprehensive description of changes along such a continuum. Two groups of people with PD and documented speech changes participated: 22 receiving standard pharmaceutical intervention, and 12 who additionally had undergone deep brain stimulation surgery (DBS), a common surgical treatment for PD. DBS is often associated with further speech impairment, but it is unknown to what extent these individuals may benefit from speech rate adjustments. Younger and older healthy control groups were also included. All participants were asked to modify their speech rate along a seven-step continuum from very slow to very fast while reading words, sentences, and responding to prompts. Naïve listeners later heard these speech samples and were asked to either transcribe or rate what they heard. Results indicated different patterns of speech changes across groups, rates, and tasks. Sentence reading and conversational speech were rated as being more intelligible at slow rates, and less intelligible at fast rates. All modified rates were found to negatively impact speech sound identification during a novel carrier phrase task. Slower speech was overall associated with greater acoustic contrast and variability, lower intensity, and higher voice quality. Differences in acoustic speech adjustments across the groups and speech rates emerged, however, in particular for the DBS group. Findings pointed to a complex relationship between speech rate modifications, acoustic distinctiveness, and intelligibility

Verbal comprehension after brain damage :a psycholinguistic investigation with special reference to cerebro-vascular accident

PhD ThesisA review of theory and practice in the examination of verbal comprehension in brain-dairiaged adults leads to the conclusion that this underdeveloped area of study can benefit from the application of theories from linguistics. An experimental investigation of (principally) adults who had suffered cerebro -vascular accident applied, amoxigst other linguistic theories, the division of language into phonological, syntactic and semantic levels of organization. The main findings were: a) Semantic abilities in speech and comprehension corresponded; syntactic abilities in speech corresponded with those in reading comprehension, but not aural comprehension; comprehension of phonemic distinctions corresponded with phonetic articulatory abilities, but not with degree of phonemic paraphasia. Tests of verbal comprehension which required simple manipulations of-objects or tokens were contaminated by gesture dyspraxia. Functional comprehension was not a reliable predictor of results on linguistic tests. b) Piphasic adults with left-brain damage experienced significantly more difficulties in comprehension when sequence was critical to the meaning of a word or sentence. At the syntactic level this occurred with reading as well as with aural input, indicating a central difficulty rather than one which is modality-specific. in aural comprehension, unlike all types of control subjects including children, aphasic adults found sentences with reversible elements in surface structure harder than sentences in which reversible deep relations are not made explicit in surface structure sequence. Sequencing appears to be a significant influence on verbal comprehension after left-brain damage. c) Right-brain-damaged adults who were not aphasic in speech, and who were familial right-handers, were selectively impaired in semantic comprehension. Semantic comprehension may be bilaterally represented in the brain, although comprehension at syntactic and phonological levels may depend principally on mechanisms lateralized to the left hemisphere.Ridley Fellowship, Newcastle University