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Parkinsonian Speech And Voice Quality: Assessment And Improvement, Amr Gaballah

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Parkinson’s disease (PD) is the second most common neurodegenerative disease. Statistics show that nearly 90% of people impaired with PD develop voice and speech disorders. Speech production impairments in PD subjects typically result in hypophonia and consequently, poor speech signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) in noisy environments and inferior speech intelligibility and quality. Assessment, monitoring, and improvement of the perceived quality and intelligibility of Parkinsonian voice and speech are, therefore, paramount. In the first study of this thesis, the perceived quality of sustained vowels produced by PD patients was assessed through objective predictors. Subjective quality ratings of sustained vowels were collected from …

Characterizing Spoken Discourse In Individuals With Parkinson Disease Without Dementia, Angela C. Roberts

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Background: The effects of disease (PD) on cognition, word retrieval, syntax, and speech/voice processes may interact to manifest uniquely in spoken language tasks. A handful of studies have explored spoken discourse production in PD and, while not ubiquitously, have reported a number of impairments including: reduced words per minute, reduced grammatical complexity, reduced informativeness, and increased verbal disruption. Methodological differences have impeded cross-study comparisons. As such, the profile of spoken language impairments in PD remains ambiguous.

Method: A cross-genre, multi-level discourse analysis, prospective, cross-sectional between groups study design was conducted with 19 PD participants (M_age = 70.74, M …