Showing papers on "Dysarthria published in 1978"

Speech disorders in cerebellar disease.

Abstract: The areas of cerebellar damage most commonly associated with dysarthria were sought by reviewing the clinical, radiographic, surgical, and autopsy findings in patients with nondegenerative cerebellar disease. Case histories on 162 patients with focal cerebellar lesions were reviewed. All but 15 of the patients underwent surgery, and 28 had autopsies. Thirty-one of the 122 patients with adequate descriptions of speech had dysarthria. Twenty-two of these 31 dysarthric patients had exclusively or predominantly left cerebellar hemisphere disease; 7 had right hemisphere disease; and 2 had vermal disease. Only 19 of 41 patients with exclusively or predominantly left hemisphere disease had had normal speech before surgery. Dysarthria developed in isolated cases following cerebellar resections extending into the paravermal segments of the left hemisphere. There was no correlation between the extent of vermal damage and development of abnormal speech. Cerebellar speech function was most commonly affected with damage to the superior portion of the left cerebellar hemisphere.

Speech Characteristics in Parkinsonism

Abstract: The purpose of the present study was to analyze and describe the characteristics of speech in dysarthric patients diagnosed as idiopathic Parkinsonism, based on auditory impressions.Eight judges independently rated each of speech samples of 34 patients on each of 39 dimensions of speech using a 4-point scale of severity. The results were as follows;1) Speech of the patients was characterized by those dimensions such as“imprecise consonants”, “harsh voice”, “breathy voice”and“phoneme repeated”.2) In comparison with previous reports on the speech characteristics of cerebellar diseases, pseudobulbar palsy and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, the severity of Parkinsonian dysarthria is considered to be relatively mild. It should also be noted that Parkinsonian dysarthria was the only type in which slow rate of speech was insignificant.3) The present results showed a considerable discrepancy when compared with those reported by Darley et al., who conducted a similar study on American English speakers. It was considered that the discrepancy might be due either to the remarkable progress in medical treatment for Parkinsonism during the ten years after the report of Darley et al, or to the linguistic difference between the two languages. On the other hand, quite similar results were obtained for comparable items of a previous report on Japanese patients by Hirose.

[An audiological evaluation method of grading the speech disturbance (author's transl)].

Abstract: Various speech methods have been devised and applied to examine speech disturbances. However, there have been no methods to determine quantitatively the degrees of the various speech disturbances, and to decide whether they have recovered or not on the basis of the values obtained from tests. Any methods have hardly been proposed to express quantitatively conversational abilities and to evaluate objectively social adaptabilities of speech disorders.The author proposed a new quantitative method for judging the degrees of speech disturbances. The principle of this method is an auditory comparison of the speech of the patients with speech disturbances and the artificially distorted speech.Eighteen kinds (No.1…No.18) of distorted words were used in this test, which resemble speech disturbances. Standard test word sounds were classified into 6 degrees based on the auditory impression and the discrimination in pronunciation.Degree I was the normal speech (No. 1, speech articulation score 98-100%). Degree II was slightest disturbances in pronunciation (No. 2, 3 and 9). Degree III was slight disturbance (No. 7 and 8 articulation score 50-75%). Degree IV was the moderate uttering disturbances (No. 4, 10, 13, 15 and 16, articulation score 30-50%). Degree V was severe uttering disturbances (No. 5, 11, 14 and 17, articulation score 10-30%). Degree VI was the loss of speech communication (No. 6, 12 and 18, articulation score, not higher than 10%).The test was applied to 30 patients with convulsive paralytic dysarthria. The degrees of disturbances in these patients almost coincided with their speech abilities in conversation. There was no difference of scores obtained by skillful and unskilled testers. Therefore, the conversation of patients with speech disturbances could be easily classified into the grades of conversational abilities by this test.It is possible to judge easily the degrees of conversational abilities with this test when this is applied to speech disturbances in the physiological process.