Purpose
The objective of the present study was to investigate whether speakers with hypophonia, secondary to Parkinson’s disease (PD), would increase their vocal intensity when speaking in a noisy environment (Lombard Effect). The other objective was to examine the underlying laryngeal and respiratory strategies used to increase vocal intensity.
Methods
Thirty-three participants with PD were included for study. Each participant was fitted with the SpeechVive™ device that played multi-talker babble noise into one ear during speech. Using acoustic, aerodynamic and respiratory kinematic techniques, the simultaneous laryngeal and respiratory mechanisms used to regulate vocal intensity were examined.
Results
Significant group results showed that most speakers with PD (26/33) were successful at increasing their vocal intensity when speaking in the condition of multi-talker babble noise. They were able to support their increased vocal intensity and subglottal pressure with combined strategies from both the laryngeal and respiratory mechanisms. Individual speaker analysis indicated that the particular laryngeal and respiratory interactions differed among speakers.
Conclusions
The SpeechVive™ device elicited higher vocal intensities from patients with PD. Speakers used different combinations of laryngeal and respiratory physiologic mechanisms to increase vocal intensity, thus suggesting that disease process does not uniformly affect the speech subsystems.
The purpose of this exploratory study was to examine speech characteristics in individuals with Parkinson’s disease (PD) before and after participation in an 11-week choral singing intervention. Speech characteristics were analyzed using an acoustic measure of vowel space area (VSA) and a standardized speech intelligibility metric. Participants included five males and five females with PD. VSA was derived for the corner vowels (/i/, /u/, /æ/ /α/) produced during a sentence-level task. VSA was expressed as an irregular quadrilateral formed by the first and second formants of these corner vowels. A validated speech intelligibility instrument was administered pre- and posttreatment. VSA significantly increased posttreatment, which suggests greater tongue excursion during vowel articulation. Speech intelligibility scores significantly increased posttreatment, thus reflecting improved speech communication. Results suggest that choral singing may be a viable speech treatment for some individuals with PD. A large-scale randomized controlled trial is warranted.
Purpose
The purpose of the current study was to investigate the effect of increased vocal intensity on interarticulator timing in individuals with Parkinson’s disease (PD).
Methods
Ten individuals with mild to moderate hypophonia, secondary to PD, were selected for study. Over an 8-week treatment period, multi-talker babble noise was presented monaurally to the individuals with PD during everyday communication contexts to elicit increased vocal intensity (Lombard effect). Outcome measures included sound pressure level (SPL), voice onset time (VOT), VOT ratio, percent voicing, and speech intelligibility.
Results
Group and individual participant responses to the treatment are reported and discussed. Speakers with PD were shown to significantly increase SPL in response to treatment. Six of the ten speakers showed improved temporal coordination between the laryngeal and supralaryngeal mechanisms (interarticulator timing) in response to treatment. Four of the ten speakers, however, showed reduced laryngeal-supralaryngeal timing at the end of treatment. Group speech intelligibility scores were significantly higher post-treatment as compared to pre-treatment.
Conclusions
Voice treatment during everyday communication resulted in improved temporal coordination across the laryngeal and supralaryngeal mechanisms for the majority of speakers with PD and made them easier to understand. Further investigations are planned to explore individual differences in response to treatment. The identification of speaker-specific voicing and devoicing strategies is consistent with the heterogeneous nature of PD.
Self-control is important for everyday life and involves behavioral regulation. Self-control requires effort, and when completing two successive self-control tasks, there is typically a temporary drop in performance in the second task. High self-reported motivation and being made self-aware somewhat counteract this effect-with the result that performance in the second task is enhanced. The current study explored the relationship between self-awareness and motivation on sequential self-control task performance. Before employing self-control in an antisaccade task, participants initially applied self-control in an incongruent Stroop task or completed a control task. After the Stroop task, participants unscrambled sentences that primed self-awareness (each started with the word "I") or unscrambled neutral sentences. Motivation was measured after the antisaccade task. Findings revealed that, after exerting selfcontrol in the incongruent Stroop task, motivation predicted erroneous responses in the antisaccade task for those that unscrambled neutral sentences, and high motivation led to fewer errors. Those primed with self-awareness were somewhat more motivated overall, but motivation did not significantly predict antisaccade performance. Supporting the resource allocation account, if one was motivated-intrinsically or via the manipulation of self-awarenessresources were allocated to both tasks leading to the successful completion of two sequential self-control tasks.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.