Characterization of Divergence in Impaired Speech of ALS Patients

Abstract

Approximately 80% to 95% of patients with Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS) eventually develop speech impairments (Beukelman et al., 2011), such as defective articulation, slow laborious speech and hypernasality (Duffy, 2013). The relationship between impaired speech and asymptomatic speech may be seen as a divergence from a baseline. This relationship can be characterized in terms of measurable combinations of phonological characteristics that are indicative of the degree to which the two diverge. We demonstrate that divergence measurements based on phonological characteristics of speech correlate with physiological assessments of ALS. Speech-based assessments offer benefits over commonly-used physiological assessments in that they are inexpensive, non-intrusive, and do not require trained clinical personnel for administering and interpreting the results.

Properties of Relative Timing and Phonetic Complexity in Adults with Dysarthria Secondary to Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis

“…Lee et al [20] showed that the intrinsic duration pattern of vowels produced by individuals with ALS may be maintained in relation to control speakers regardless of their dysarthria severity. Furthermore, at the prosodic level, speakers with ALS may produce pauses at locations that are not prosodic boundaries [21]. As prosody is relevant to the timing properties of speech, it is possible that altered prosody may be related to changed relative timing in speakers with ALS.…”