What is it about?

Speech production is a complex process involving the rapid, coordinated movement of muscles in the mouth, throat, and respiratory system. In cerebellar ataxia, the pathways in the brain responsible for coordination become disrupted over time. This degeneration in the brain can impact the naturalness of speech. But what factors contribute to our judgments of speech naturalness? In this study, we explored the relationships between specific speech features and the perceptual quality of speech naturalness. We found that objective measures of pitch and rate control were highly correlated with perceptual judgments of speech naturalness in participants with ataxia.

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Why is it important?

Speech naturalness is highly subjective and notoriously difficult to measure.This study directly correlates objective acoustic data from commonly-used speech assessment tasks with perceptual judgments of speech naturalness. Our results inform our understanding of what speech characteristics may contribute to listeners' judgments of impaired speech naturalness in clinical populations. These findings can improve SLPs' assessments of speech naturalness and inform their selection of treatment approaches.

Perspectives

One of our team's goals is to pursue research that translates directly into clinical practice. We hope to aid in the development of accessible assessment and treatment tools for working SLPs. This study was an excellent opportunity to explore a new application for common speech assessment tasks. Additionally, treatment of speech disorders in ataxia is often difficult for SLPs since it involves targeting the more abstract features of speech (i.e., naturalness and prosody) rather than more quantifiable features such as intelligibility or loudness. We hope this study offers insight to clinicians treating this population.

Caitlin Cloud
University of Nebraska-Lincoln

Read the Original

This page is a summary of: The Contributions of Pitch, Loudness, and Rate Control to Speech Naturalness in Cerebellar Ataxia, American Journal of Speech-Language Pathology, September 2024, American Speech-Language-Hearing Association (ASHA),
DOI: 10.1044/2024_ajslp-24-00018.
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