Formant trajectory characteristics in speakers with dysarthria and homogeneous speech intelligibility scores: Further data
Yunjung Kim, Gary G. Weismer, Ray D. Kent · The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America · 2005
In previous work [J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 117, 2605 (2005)], we reported on formant trajectory characteristics of a relatively large number of speakers with dysarthria and near-normal speech intelligibility. The purpose of that analysis was to begin a documentation of the variability, within relatively homogeneous speech-severity groups, of acoustic measures commonly used to predict across-speaker variation in speech intelligibility. In that study we found that even with near-normal speech intelligibility (90%–100%), many speakers had reduced formant slopes for some words and distributional characteristics of acoustic measures that were different than values obtained from normal speakers. In the current report we extend those findings to a group of speakers with dysarthria with somewhat poorer speech intelligibility than the original group. Results are discussed in terms of the utility of certain acoustic measures as indices of speech intelligibility, and as explanatory data for theories of dysarthria. [Work supported by NIH Award R01 DC00319.]