An acoustic investigation of Parkinsonian speech in linguistic and emotional contexts

The sound of sarcasm

“…Heilman et al, 1984;Tompkins, 1991). Recently, we have shown comparable difficulties to communicate emotions and 'prosodic attitudes' such as confidence or politeness in patients with Parkinson's disease (Cheang and Pell, 2007;Pell and Leonard, 2003;Pell et al, 2006). Deriving a better understanding of fundamental acoustic markers of attitudes in speech and their biasing linguistic and contextual factors would be germane to improve diagnosis and treatment of many ''pragmatic language disorders" in these patients.…”

Listener impressions of speakers with Parkinson’s disease

“…The ability to use prosody, or tone of voice, to convey meaningful distinctions in communication is also frequently impaired in PD (Caekebeke, Jennekens-Schinkel, van der Linden, Buruma, & Roos, 1991 ;Darkins, Fromkin, & Benson, 1988 ;Pell & Leonard, 2003 ). Recently, Cheang and Pell ( 2007 ) compared the ability of 21 PD speakers and 21 healthy adults to produce acoustic distinctions marking lexical stress (e.g., "hotDOG" vs. "HOTdog"), word emphasis, and vocallyexpressed emotions. Consistent with the literature, the PD speakers were restricted in the ability to modulate fundamental frequency (f0) and intensity to emphasize specifi c words in a sentence and to express certain emotions through prosody.…”

Some prosodic characteristics of parkinsonian French speech: Effects of bilateral stimulation of the subthalamic nucleus

“…Acoustic investigations of statements and questions produced by normal speakers and PD patients also demonstrated decreased F 0 changes marking the differences between the declarative and interrogative modes (Le Dorze, Ouellet, & Ryalls, 1994;Le Dorze, Ryalls, Brassard, Boulanger, & Ratte, 1988;Torp & Hammen, 2000). More recently, in an acoustic investigation of PD speech and control speech in linguistic and emotional context, F 0 differed between the two speaker groups for contrastive stress and emotional prosody production (Cheang & Pell, 2007). The above studies clearly demonstrate that reduction in F 0 range and variability is an indicator of PD.…”

“…The above studies clearly demonstrate that reduction in F 0 range and variability is an indicator of PD. Moreover, it seems that decreased F 0 variability is particularly noticeable during the early progression of the disease (Cheang & Pell, 2007;Harel, Cannizzaro, Cohen, Reilly, & Snyder, 2004;Viallet & Gentil, 2001) and that F 0 variability continues to decrease as the severity of the disease increases (Metter & Hanson, 1986).…”