Examining Variation in Treatment Outcomes among Speakers with Dysarthria

Abstract

Studies investigating the outcomes of behavioral treatments for dysarthria commonly focus on group-level effects. Individual differences in treatment response have received less attention. Currently, we have limited understanding of why some speakers respond favorably to certain intervention programs but others do not. This article advocates for a more individualized approach to assessing the efficacy of speech pathology intervention. A conceptual framework is presented, in which the effects of salient speech features and contextual factors upon treatment outcomes are considered statistically, with a view to informing treatment planning and development of future clinical studies. Preliminary evidence is presented in support of this framework—demonstrating that detailed measurements of the speech signal can predict which individuals respond favorably to certain treatment cues, even among participants with the same dysarthria etiology and subtype. Future directions for the study of individualized assessment and treatment approaches are discussed.

Articulatory speech measures can be related to the severity of multiple sclerosis

“…Unlike the findings in previous studies, which described prosody as one of the subsystems with the largest alteration ( 7 , 9 , 13 , 33 ), in this sample, no significance was found in this data since only 5.4% ( n = 4) of the patients showed changes in the APA. However, individuals with MS showed a decrease in the frequency variation in the enunciation of the affirmation sentence compared to the control group, a possible indication of difficulty in uttering sentences that require less variability while maintaining the ability to perform more significant variation in exclamatory and interrogative sentences.…”