Phonetics and Phonology Commons^™

Relationship Between Acoustic Measures And Speech Naturalness Ratings In Parkinson’S Disease: A Within-Speaker Approach, Marie I. Klopfenstein

SIUE Faculty Research, Scholarship, and Creative Activity

This study investigated the acoustic basis of across-utterance, within-speaker variation in speech naturalness for four speakers with dysarthria secondary to Parkinson’s disease (PD). Speakers read sentences and produced spontaneous speech. Acoustic measures of fundamental frequency, phrase-final syllable lengthening, intensity and speech rate were obtained. A group of listeners judged speech naturalness using a nine-point Likert scale. Relationships between judgements of speech naturalness and acoustic measures were determined for individual speakers with PD. Relationships among acoustic measures also were quantified. Despite variability between speakers, measures of mean F0, intensity range, articulation rate, average syllable duration, duration of final syllables, vocalic nucleus …