Effects of Speaking Rate on Word Recognition in Parkinson's Disease and Normal Aging.

Effects of Speaking Rate on Word Recognition in Parkinson's Disease and Normal Aging. J Med Speech Lang Pathol. 1998 Mar;6(1):1-12 Authors: Forrest K, Nygaard L, Pisoni DB, Siemers E Abstract Current theories of basal ganglia function emphasize their role in the integration of sensory information into motor activities, particularly in the control of movement timing. People with basal ganglia disorders such as Parkinson's disease exhibit poor temporal control of movements, in general and articulation in particular, as demonstrated by irregular speaking rate, reduced stress contrasts, and reduced movement durations and velocities. Previous research has implicated sensory deficits as contributory factors in limb movement control in patients with Parkinson's disease; however, the relation between sensory deficits and speech-movement abnormalities has not been documented. In the present study, the existence of perceptual processing difficulties of speaking rate was investigated in subjects with Parkinsonian dysarthria (PD). Comparisons in perception were made between subjects with PD, neurologically normal geriatrics (GN) and neurologically normal young adults (YN) for accuracy in identification of words presented at different speaking rates. We hypothesized that word-identification scores would be lower for PD and GN subjects compared to the YN subjects, an effect that was supported by the data. We also expected that there would be diffe...
Source: Journal of Medical Speech - Language Pathology - Category: Speech Therapy Tags: J Med Speech Lang Pathol Source Type: research