• Login
    View Item 
    •   SOAR Home
    • Graduate School
    • ETD: Electronic Theses and Dissertations
    • Master's Theses
    • View Item
    •   SOAR Home
    • Graduate School
    • ETD: Electronic Theses and Dissertations
    • Master's Theses
    • View Item
    JavaScript is disabled for your browser. Some features of this site may not work without it.

    The effect of slow speech on tongue movements & acoustic vowel space distance in speakers with Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis

    View
    t13014_Entz.pdf
    Download
    t13014_Entz.pdf
     
    Date
    2013-05
    Author
    Entz, Stephanie
    Metadata
    Show full item record
    Abstract
    With disease progression, the speech of talkers with Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS) becomes increasingly imprecise and unintelligible. Although speaking rate reduction is commonly used as a treatment approach to enhance speech intelligibility in these talkers, its effect on tongue movements and speech acoustics is not well understood. Thus, the purpose of this study was to determine how slow speech affects tongue excursions and speech acoustics in persons with ALS. Further, this study investigated how tongue excursions and speech acoustics differed between persons with ALS and healthy controls. Lastly, this study sought to determine how predictable tongue excursions are based on speech acoustics in persons with ALS. 3D electromagnetic articulography was used to capture tongue movements during speech in five talkers with ALS and five healthy controls. Tongue excursions and the vowel space distance during the production of the vowels /a/ and /i/ in the word "kite" embedded in the sentence "See a kite again" were measured during typical and slow speech. Results showed increased tongue excursions and acoustic vowel space in response to slow speech for persons with ALS and controls; however, the effect was larger in the control group than in the ALS group. These outcomes support the current clinical assumption that slow speech increases tongue excursions and expanded vowel space in persons with speech impairments due to ALS. Although tongue excursions tended to be slightly larger in persons with ALS than controls, vowel space tended to be smaller in persons with ALS than controls. These findings challenged the current assumption that a small vowel space indicate small tongue excursion. The predictability of change in tongue excursions based on change in speech acoustics in response to slow speech was much lower in persons with ALS than controls. Thus, acoustic measures should not be used to infer the underlying speech movements in persons with ALS.
    Description
    Thesis (M.A.)--Wichita State University, College of Health Professions, Dept. of Communication Sciences and Disorders
    URI
    http://hdl.handle.net/10057/6813
    Collections
    • CSD Theses and Dissertations [43]
    • CHP Theses and Dissertations [46]
    • Master's Theses [1437]

    SOAR is a service of Wichita State University Libraries
    Contact Us | Send Feedback
    Site statistics 
     

     

    Browse

    All of SOARCommunities & CollectionsBy Issue DateAuthorsTitlesSubjectsTypeThis CollectionBy Issue DateAuthorsTitlesSubjectsType

    My Account

    LoginRegister

    Statistics

    View Usage Statistics

    SOAR is a service of Wichita State University Libraries
    Contact Us | Send Feedback
    Site statistics