Dysarthria

About: Dysarthria is a research topic. Over the lifetime, 2402 publications have been published within this topic receiving 56554 citations.

Accuracy and inter-observer variation in the classification of dysarthria from speech recordings.

Abstract: Dysarthria may be classified as flaccid, spastic, ataxic, hypokinetic, choreatic, dystonic, or mixed. We hypothesized that in routine neurological practice the reliability and accuracy of perceptual analysis alone in the classification of dysarthria is low and that this classification is mainly based on the clinical context rather than on the perception of speech. We therefore studied the accuracy and the inter- observer agreement in the classification of dysarthrias on the basis of perceptual analysis alone. Seventy two neurologists and neurological trainees classified recorded speech samples of 100 patients as flaccid, spastic, ataxic, extrapyramidal, or mixed dysarthria, or as not dysarthric. All observers were blinded to the patients’ final diagnosis, which was based on all clinical features and investigations. In the analysis the observers were arranged in eight groups of nine observers, or four paired groups with similar levels of clinical experience. Together, the observers in a given group rated all 100 recordings. The accuracy of the classification was poor (35 % were classified correctly) and the inter-observer agreement between paired groups low (κ 0.16 to 0.32). The level of experience in neurology did not have a significant influence. Neurological trainees as well as experienced neurologists have great difficulty in identifying specific types of dysarthria on the basis of perceptual analysis alone. In clinical practice this probably means that most neurologists will classify dysarthria in the context of other features from neurological examination or ancillary investigations.

Automatic dysfluency detection in dysarthric speech using deep belief networks

Abstract: Dysarthria is a speech disorder caused by difficulties in controlling muscles, such as the tongue and lips, that are needed to produce speech. These differences in motor skills cause speech to be slurred, mumbled, and spoken relatively slowly, and can also increase the likelihood of dysfluency. This includes nonspeech sounds, and ‘stuttering’, defined here as a disruption in the fluency of speech manifested by prolongations, stop-gaps, and repetitions. This paper investigates different types of input features used by deep neural networks (DNNs) to automatically detect repetition stuttering and non-speech dysfluencies within dysarthric speech. The experiments test the effects of dimensionality within Mel-frequency cepstral coefficients (MFCCs) and linear predictive cepstral coefficients (LPCCs), and explore the detection capabilities in dyarthric versus non-dysarthric speech. The results obtained using MFCC and LPCC features produced similar recognition accuracies; repetition stuttering in dysarthric speech was identified correctly at approximately 86% and 84% for non-dysarthric speech. Non-speech sounds were recognized with approximately 75% accuracy in dysarthric speakers.

Speech production in Parkinson's disease: II. Acoustic and electropalatographic investigation of sentence, word and segment durations.

Abstract: Previous investigations employing electropalatography (EPG) have identified articulatory timing deficits in individuals with acquired dysarthria. However, this technology is yet to be applied to the articulatory timing disturbance present in Parkinson's disease (PD). As a result, the current investigation aimed to use EPG to comprehensively examine the temporal aspects of articulation in a group of nine individuals with PD at sentence, word and segment level. This investigation followed on from a prior study (McAuliffe, Ward and Murdoch) and similarly, aimed to compare the results of the participants with PD to a group of aged (n = 7) and young controls (n = 8) to determine if ageing contributed to any articulatory timing deficits observed. Participants were required to read aloud the phrase "I saw a _ today" with the EPG palate in-situ. Target words included the consonants /l/, /s/ and /t/ in initial position in both the /i/ and /a/ vowel environments. Perceptual investigation of speech rate was conducted in addition to objective measurement of sentence, word and segment duration. Segment durations included the total segment length and duration of the approach, closure/constriction and release phases of EPG consonant production. Results of the present study revealed impaired speech rate, perceptually, in the group with PD. However, this was not confirmed objectively. Electropalatographic investigation of segment durations indicated that, in general, the group with PD demonstrated segment durations consistent with the control groups. Only one significant difference was noted, with the group with PD exhibiting significantly increased duration of the release phase for /la/ when compared to both the control groups. It is, therefore, possible that EPG failed to detect lingual movement impairment as it does not measure the complete tongue movement towards and away from the hard palate. Furthermore, the contribution of individual variation to the present findings should not be overlooked.