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Purpose: The purpose of the study was to determine the effect of clear speech instruction on acoustic measures of dysprosody between reading passages of differing linguistic content for speakers with and without Parkinson Disease (PD). Method: Ten speakers with PD and 10 controls served as participants and read five simple and three standard reading stimuli twice. First, speakers read habitually and then following clear speech instruction. Acoustic measures of fundamental frequency variation (semitone standard deviation, STSD), articulation rate, and between-complex pause durations were calculated. Result: Results indicated speakers with PD exhibited less fundamental frequency variation than controls across reading stimuli and instructions. All speakers exhibited lower STSD and longer between-complex pause durations for the standard compared to simple reading stimuli. For clear speech, all speakers reduced articulation rate and increased between-complex pause durations in both simple and standard reading stimuli. However, speakers with PD exhibited a significantly less robust reduction in articulation rate for clear speech than control speakers for all reading stimuli. Conclusion: Linguistic content of reading stimuli contributes to differences in fundamental frequency variation and pause duration for all speakers. All speakers reduced articulation rate for clear speech compared to habitual instruction, but speakers with PD did so to a lesser extent than controls. Linguistic content of reading stimuli to examine dysprosody in PD should be considered for clinical application. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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]

Arteriovenous malformation (AVM) results from development of abnormal connections between veins and arteries. This study reported anAVM case suffering from dysgraphia and dysprosody. According to the results after the trauma, the patient's handwriting was identified as macrographic and illegible, and written letters and verbs were neglected in free writing or dictation. Moreover, prosody of the patient's utterances was changed. Finally, an intervention was conducted to improve the writing impairments whereby they eventually enhanced. AVM can adversely affect communication opportunities and working life due to these impairments. Thus referring the patient to speech and language pathologists seems sensible and necessary. [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]

Foreign accent syndrome is a rare dysprosody in which pronunciation of a patient's speech is perceived by same-language listeners as sounding foreign. Sixty cases have been described between 1941 and 2009. It is commonly associated with an acquired brain injury (vascular insult/head injury), but also with psychogenic illness and has been described in two cases as a developmental problem. Here we describe a case secondary to a minor electrocution associated with no evidence of structural brain injury on imaging. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]