Predicting segmental substitution errors in aphasic patients with phonological and phonetic encoding impairments

Abstract

Citation / Cómo citar este artículo: Anna Marczyk and Lorraine Baqué. Predicting segmental substitution errors in aphasic patients with phonological and phonetic encoding impairments. Loquens, 2(2), e023. doi: http://dx.doi. org/10. 3989/loquens.2015.023 ABSTRACT: This paper analyses the factors that predict substitution errors produced by four Broca's and four conduction aphasic subjects, all native speakers of Spanish, in reading and repetition tasks. Errors were elicited using a list of words where type of consonant, lexical stress and phonetic context were controlled for and where variables related to frequency of occurrence (word and syllable) and phonological neighbourhood characteristics were assigned using available online corpora. 675 substitution errors were obtained and preferential tendencies to devoice, occlusivise or spirantise were identified. Logistic regression mixed-effect models were performed on these three types of substitution errors to identify the predictors depending on the aphasic profile.While our results lent support to the hypothesis of a concomitant phonetic deficit in fluent aphasia, contrary to the classical claim, it also revealed differential patterns in the phonic behaviour of patients regarding the access to mental syllabary or syllabic position effects.Our results are discussed in relation to the phonetic vs. phonological impairments dimension in aphasia and the seriality/interactivity axis in speech architectures.Keywords: phonetic and phonological impairments; aphasia; substitution errors. RESUMEN: Estudio de predictores de los errores segmentales de sustitución en pacientes afásicos con un déficit fonético-fonológico.Este estudio se propone identificar los factores que permiten predecir la aparición de errores segmentales de sustitución producidos por pacientes con afasia de Broca y de conducción en tareas de lectura y de repetición. El corpus utilizado para obtener los errores consistía en 240 palabras en las que las consonantes objeto de estudio -oclusivas, fricativas y africadas del español-se encontraban en distintos contextos fonéticos y acentuales. Posteriormente, se atribuyó a las palabras del corpus los valores relativos a la frecuencia léxica y silábica, así como las características relacionadas con la vecindad fonológica, empleando para ello corpus disponibles en línea.En total, se obtuvieron 675 sustituciones, en las que prevalecen tres tendencias: ensordecimiento de las oclusivas sonoras, refuerzo (oclusivización) de las fricativas y espirantización de las oclusivas. Para identificar los predictores de cualquiera de estos tres tipos de substitución en relación con el perfil clínico de afasia, se efectuó un análisis mediante el modelo mixto de regresión logística.Los resultados son globalmente congruentes con la hipótesis de un déficit fonético concomitante al déficit fonológico en la afasia de conducción, contrariamente a las predicciones de la hipótesis clásica. Sin embargo, el examen de los errores revela también patrones de tratamiento fónico distintos se...

Lexical stress contrast marking in fluent and non-fluent aphasia in Spanish: The relationship between acoustic cues and compensatory strategies

“…Actually such a 'uniform' co-variation between two cues has also been associated in studies about the phonetic realisation of segmental phonological oppositions with 'clear speech' (concomitant strengthening) (Uchanski, 2005;Ferguson & Kewley-Port, 2007) and reduction processes (concomitant weakening) phenomena (van Son & Pols, 1999;Mooshammer & Geng, 2008), and related to prosodic strengthening (Cho, 2005;Cole, Kim, Choi, & Hasegawa-Johnson, 2007), mostly interpreted within the hypoarticulation and hyper-articulation (H&H) theory framework (Lindblom, 1990). In a previous study (Baqué, 2015;Marczyk & Baqué, 2015) involving the same patients, we observed that some segmental phonological contrasts in vowel and consonant productions were enhanced under stress and reduced in unstressed syllables and interpreted these results as possibly related to an H&H phenomena. Thus, further, more focused analyses are needed in order to identify the main factors underlying intensity and duration co-variation in stress contrast marking in conduction aphasics' speech and to determine the extent to which the observed acoustic differences result from a subtle phonetic impairment or are related to speech style and/or monitoring effects (e.g.…”

Parámetros temporales de las oclusivas sordas en un hablante con afasia de Broca y apraxia del habla: estudio de caso

“…Finally, as for error distribution, most authors agree that Broca's aphasics tend to make a greater number of errors in syllable onsets, especially in absolute initial position, due to their difficulty in initiating speech (Marczyk, 2015;Tuller, 1984), and their inadequate articulatory tension (Marczyk and Baqué, 2015). According to the latter authors, the most common errors in initial position are segmental substitutions, which are present in more than 50% of the reported cases, followed by elisions, distortions, contextual substitutions, and additions.…”

“…However, the literature on such an influence is both extensive and diverse which is why it has not been considered a highly relevant factor in the research -see Machuca (1997) for a more rigorous review on the subject. Second, previous studies have shown that speakers with aphasia tend to produce more errors in syllable onsets and when trying to initiate speech (Marczyk, 2015;Marczyk and Baqué, 2015;Tuller, 1984). Although the reviewed literature does not point at errors related to temporal parameters, it would be interesting to make the distinction between stops in word initial and word medial position when analysing duration values, as well as sonorisation and fricativisation errors.…”

Étude exploratoire du déficit phonologique dans l’aphasie vasculaire : Complexité des structures syllabiques

“…Ainsi, un locuteur atteint d'une aphasie de type non-fluent avec un déficit de la programmation motrice peut également être atteint d'un déficit phonologique associé. En raison de cela, de nombreuses études avancent l'idée qu'il existe un continuum entre les processus phonologiques et phonétiques dans la production des énoncés (Buckingham et Buckingham, 2015;Marczyck et Baqué, 2015;Laganaro, 2014Laganaro, , 2015. En somme, il existerait, dans l'aphasie, deux origines distinctes possibles pour un trouble, mais une continuité constante entre encodage phonologique et encodage phonétique (Buckingham et Christman, 2008).…”

“…Elles font pour cela l'objet de recherches approfondies. La majorité des travaux qui s'y consacre se concentre sur les erreurs d'origine phonétique et principalement sur le phonème, ainsi que sur les traits distinctifs 2 et leurs réalisations (Marczyk et Baqué, 2015;Verhaegen et al, 2020Verhaegen et al, , 2018Verhaegen et al, , 2016. Il est admis que certains phonèmes ou certains traits distinctifs posent des difficultés indéniables aux locuteurs.…”