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The aim of this study was to assess prosodic features in Finnish speakers with (n = 16) and without (n = 20) Parkinson's disease (PD), as there are no published studies to date of prosodic features in Finnish speakers with PD. Chosen metrics were articulation rate (syllables/second), pitch (mean F0) and pitch variability (standard deviation F0), energy proportion below 1 kHz (epb1kHz), normalised pairwise variability index (nPVI), and a novel syllabic prosody index (SPI). Four statistically significant results were found: (1) energy was distributed more to lower frequencies in speakers with PD compared to control speakers, (2) male PD speakers had higher pitch and (3) higher syllabic prosody index compared to control males, and (4) female PD speakers had narrower pitch variability than controls. In this study, PD was manifested as less emphatic and breathier voice. Interestingly, male PD speakers' dysprosody was manifested as an effortful speaking style, whereas female PD speakers exhibited dysprosody with a monotonous speaking style. A novel syllable-based prosody index could be a potentially useful tool in analysing prosody in disordered speech. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Word stress processing has repeatedly been reported to be affected in specific language impairment (SLI) with potential consequences for various aspects of language development. However, it still remains unresolved whether word stress impairments in SLI are due to deficits in basic auditory processing or to a degraded phonological representation or both. We addressed this question examining an unselected sample of 10 children with SLI and 11 typically developing (TD) children, aged about 8 years, with respect to their basic auditory processing (duration and skewness discrimination) and phonological representation of prosodic (word stress) and segmental (consonant) contrasts. Our results show lower performance of the SLI group compared to the TD group in all tasks. Crucially, two subgroups of children with SLI emerged from our analyses: While one group was impaired in basic auditory perception, particularly affecting duration discrimination, the other showed no significant auditory processing deficits but a representational impairment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Acoustic research of intonation in dysprosody has often been restricted to overall measures - such as range and variability of fundamental frequency (F[sub 0]) - without consideration of the interactions between intonation contours and acoustic measurements. The aim of this acoustic study was to investigate three aspects of disordered intonation in hypokinetic dysarthria resulting from Parkinson's disease (PD): adequacy of accent patterns, timing of pitch accents, and the influence of levodopa-medication on peak height in fundamental frequency. Three PD speakers participated in a single-subject design study. Eighteen sentences were recorded at different times after ingestion of levodopa. Intonation contours were categorized and F[sub 0] was measured at lows and highs of the observed contours. Compared to controls, PD speakers showed reduced peak height and placed F[sub 0] peaks more often directly on the accented syllables. Medication caused a decrease of peak height in one of the accents in speaker 1, an increase of peak height in some accent patterns in speaker 2 and no changes in speaker 3. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]