This study examines the impact of Parkinson's disease (PD) on communicative efficiency conveyed through prosody. A new assessment method for evaluating productive prosodic skills in Dutch speaking dysarthric patients was devised and tested on 36 individuals (18 controls, 18 PD patients). Three professional listeners judged the intended meanings in four communicative functions of Dutch prosody: Boundary Marking, Focus, Sentence Typing, and Emotional Prosody. Each function was tested through reading and imitation. Interrater agreement was calculated. Results indicated that healthy speakers, compared to PD patients, performed significantly better on imitation of Boundary Marking, Focus, and Sentence Typing. PD patients with a moderate or severe dysarthria performed significantly worse on imitation of Focus than on reading of Focus. No significant differences were found for Emotional Prosody. Judges agreed well on all tasks except Emotional Prosody. Future research will focus on elaborating the assessment and on developing a therapy programme paralleling the assessment. 1. Introduction Dysarthria is a frequent complication of Parkinson’s disease (PD). PD has been reported to affect speech in at least 60% of PD patients, with increased prevalence as the disease progresses [1]. Parkinsonian speech is mainly characterised by the impairment of voice, articulation, and prosody [1, 2]. This multidimensional impairment can have a negative impact on speech intelligibility and hence on communication and on quality of life. Previous research points out that, next to articulation, prosody is the second most important factor contributing to speech intelligibility in dysarthric patients in general [3]. Prosody commonly refers to the suprasegmental speech signal aspects used to convey meaning through variation in fundamental frequency (F0), intensity, and duration [4–7]. In dysarthric PD patients specifically, six out of ten most deviant speech dimensions are associated with prosody: monopitch, reduced stress, monoloudness, inappropriate silences, short rushes of speech, and variable rate [1]. Therefore, assessing prosodic skills is important in the diagnosis and remediation of speech disorders in PD. Nevertheless, scientific interest in the phenomenon of prosody within the field of speech-language pathology is rather scarce and slowly evolving, when it comes to characterisation, assessment, and intervention of atypical prosody [8–10]. During the last decade, the majority of publications focussing on prosody in PD evaluated prosody in terms of its formal dimensions, such
References
[1]
J. R. Duffy, Motor Speech Disorders, Elsevier Mosby, St. Louis, Mo, USA, 2005.
[2]
S. Skodda, H. Rinsche, and U. Schlegel, “Progression of dysprosody in Parkinson's disease over time—a longitudinal study,” Movement Disorders, vol. 24, no. 5, pp. 716–722, 2009.
[3]
M. S. De Bodt, M. E. Hernández-Díaz Huici, and P. H. Van De Heyning, “Intelligibility as a linear combination of dimensions in dysarthric speech,” Journal of Communication Disorders, vol. 35, no. 3, pp. 283–292, 2002.
[4]
R. Patel and P. Campellone, “Acoustic and perceptual cues to contrastive stress in dysarthria,” Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research, vol. 52, no. 1, pp. 206–222, 2009.
[5]
M. D. Pell, H. S. Cheang, and C. L. Leonard, “The impact of Parkinson's disease on vocal-prosodic communication from the perspective of listeners,” Brain and Language, vol. 97, no. 2, pp. 123–134, 2006.
[6]
M. De Letter, P. Santens, I. Estercam et al., “Levodopa-induced modifications of prosody and comprehensibility in advanced Parkinson's disease as perceived by professional listeners,” Clinical Linguistics and Phonetics, vol. 21, no. 10, pp. 783–791, 2007.
[7]
S. Peppé, J. McCann, F. Gibbon, A. O'Hare, and M. Rutherford, “Receptive and expressive prosodic ability in children with high-functioning autism,” Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research, vol. 50, no. 4, pp. 1015–1028, 2007.
[8]
S. J. E. Peppé, “Why is prosody in speech-language pathology so difficult,” International Journal of Speech-Language Pathology, vol. 11, no. 4, pp. 258–271, 2009.
[9]
J. J. Diehl and R. Paul, “The assessment and treatment of prosodic disorders and neurological theories of prosody,” International Journal of Speech-Language Pathology, vol. 11, no. 4, pp. 287–292, 2009.
[10]
P. Hargrove, A. Anderson, and J. Jones, “A critical review of interventions targeting prosody,” International Journal of Speech-Language Pathology, vol. 11, no. 4, pp. 298–304, 2009.
[11]
H. Penner, N. Miller, I. Hertrich, H. Ackermann, and F. Schumm, “Dysprosody in Parkinson's disease: an investigation of intonation patterns,” Clinical Linguistics and Phonetics, vol. 15, no. 7, pp. 551–566, 2001.
[12]
A. M. Goberman, C. A. Coelho, and M. P. Robb, “Prosodic characteristics of Parkinsonian speech: the effect of levodopa-based medication,” Journal of Medical Speech-Language Pathology, vol. 13, no. 1, pp. 51–68, 2005.
[13]
J. M？bes, G. Joppich, F. Stiebritz, R. Dengler, and C. Schr？der, “Emotional speech in Parkinson's disease,” Movement Disorders, vol. 23, no. 6, pp. 824–829, 2008.
[14]
M. K. MacPherson, J. E. Huber, and D. P. Snow, “The intonation-syntax interface in the speech of individuals with Parkinson’s disease,” Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research, vol. 54, no. 1, pp. 19–32, 2011.
[15]
J. K. Ma, T. Whitehill, and K. S. Cheung, “Dysprosody and stimulus effects in Cantonese speakers with Parkinson's disease,” International Journal of Language and Communication Disorders, vol. 45, no. 6, pp. 645–655, 2010.
[16]
A. Turk, “Is prosody the music of speech? Advocating a functional perspective,” International Journal of Speech-Language Pathology, vol. 11, no. 4, pp. 316–320, 2009.
[17]
S. Peppé and J. McCann, “Assessing intonation and prosody in children with atypical language development: the PEPS-C test and the revised version,” Clinical Linguistics and Phonetics, vol. 17, no. 4-5, pp. 345–354, 2003.
[18]
S. Peppé, P. Martínez-Castilla, R. Lickley, et al., “Functionality and perceived atypicality of expressive prosody in children with Autism spectrum disorders,” in Proceedings of the Speech Prosody, paper 060, Dresden, Germany, 2006.
[19]
C. Schr？der, J. M？bes, M. Schütze et al., “Perception of emotional speech in Parkinson's disease,” Movement Disorders, vol. 21, no. 10, pp. 1774–1778, 2006.
[20]
J. K. Ma, T. L. Whitehill, and S. Y. S. So, “Intonation contrast in Cantonese speakers with hypokinetic dysarthria associated with Parkinson's disease,” Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research, vol. 53, no. 4, pp. 836–849, 2010.
[21]
R. Patel, “Acoustic characteristics of the question-statement contrast in severe dysarthria due to cerebral palsy,” Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research, vol. 46, no. 6, pp. 1401–1415, 2003.
[22]
R. Patel, “Prosodic control in severe dysarthria: preserved ability to mark the question-statement contrast,” Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research, vol. 45, no. 5, pp. 858–870, 2002.
[23]
A. C. M. Rietveld and V. J. van Heuven, Algemene Fonetiek, Coutinho, Bussum, The Netherlands, 2009.
[24]
K. Bunton, R. D. Kent, J. F. Kent, and J. C. Rosenbek, “Perceptuo-acoustic assessment of prosodic impairment in dysarthria,” Clinical Linguistics and Phonetics, vol. 14, no. 1, pp. 13–24, 2000.
[25]
E. Blaauw, “The contribution of prosodic boundary markers to the perceptual difference between read and spontaneous speech,” Speech Communication, vol. 14, no. 4, pp. 359–375, 1994.
[26]
G. P. M. Laan, “The contribution of intonation, segmental durations, and spectral features to the perception of a spontaneous and a read speaking style,” Speech Communication, vol. 22, no. 1, pp. 43–65, 1997.
[27]
C. Samuelsson and U. Nettelbladt, “Prosodic problems in Swedish children with language impairment: towards a classification of subgroups,” International Journal of Language and Communication Disorders, vol. 39, no. 3, pp. 325–344, 2004.
[28]
D. Ververidis and C. Kotropoulos, “Emotional speech recognition: resources, features, and methods,” Speech Communication, vol. 48, no. 9, pp. 1162–1181, 2006.
[29]
K. P. Truong and S. Raaijmakers, “Automatic recognition of spontaneous emotions in speech using acoustic and lexical features,” in Proceedings of the Machine Learning and Multimodal Interaction, pp. 161–172, Utrecht, The Netherlands, 2008.
[30]
J. P. H. van Santen, E. T. Prud'hommeaux, and L. M. Black, “Automated assessment of prosody production,” Speech Communication, vol. 51, no. 11, pp. 1082–1097, 2009.
