The Value of Speech Amplification in Parkinson’s Disease Patients

Effect of Level of Presentation to Listeners on Scaled Speech Intelligibility of Speakers with Dysarthria

“…Similarly, Turner et al [15] reported little change in word intelligibility and phonetic contrast errors across five presentation levels (35,45,55,65, 75 dB HL) for utterances produced by speakers with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis. Based on these findings, the authors supported the notion of a limited benefit of amplification for those speakers with word intelligibility deficits resulting from impairments in the speech production system beyond respiration [16,17] .…”

“…Fox et al [6] ). Some studies have pointed out that the greatest benefit of amplification occurs for individuals with only reduced vocal intensity [15][16][17] . Even speakers with the homogenous etiology of Parkinson's disease did not obtain the same increase in speech intelligibility from loud speech versus amplification [18] .…”

Delivering the Lee Silverman Voice Treatment (LSVT) by web camera: a feasibility study

“…When offered, therapy typically targeted respiratory function to improve support for speech, treatment for phonation to improve vocal intensity, articulatory drills to improve precision and reduce rate, and prosodic therapies to improve the use of stress and intonation (Yorkston et al 1988). Therapeutic devices used to improve intelligibility included amplification devices, delayed auditory feedback, biofeedback and masking devices (Greene and Watson 1968, Downie et al 1988). Treatment intensity appears to be important.…”

Speech-Language Therapy for Patients with Parkinson's Disease

“…. , little benefit may be gained from amplification'' (Greene and Watson, 1968). Even with the advances in miniaturization of amplification, making the speech louder mechanically will not compensate Downloaded by [University of Southern Queensland] at 07:21 07 October 2014…”