title: Inducing speech errors in dysarthria using tongue twisters.
abstract: Although tongue twisters have been widely use to study speech production in healthy speakers, few studies have employed this methodology for individuals with speech impairment. The present study compared tongue twister errors produced by adults with dysarthria and age-matched healthy controls. Eight speakers (four female, four male; mean age = 54.5 years) with spastic (mixed-spastic) dysarthria of varying aetiology (cerebral palsy, multiple sclerosis, multiple system atrophy) and eight controls (four female, four male; mean age = 56.9 years) were audio-recorded producing tongue twisters. One word in each tongue twister was marked for prominence. Speakers with dysarthria produced significantly more errors and spoke slower than healthy controls. The effect of prominence was significant for both groups-words spoken with prosodic prominence were significantly less error prone compared with words without prominence. While both groups produced most errors on words in the third position (of four-word utterances), speakers with dysarthria also produced high rates of errors on the first and fourth words. This preliminary investigation demonstrated the promise of applying the tongue twister paradigm to speakers with dysarthria and contributes to the evidence base for the implementation of prosodic strategies in speech intervention.
authors.affiliation: The MARCS Institute for Brain, Behaviour and Development, Western Sydney University, Australia.|Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders, Northeastern University, Boston, MA, USA.
authors.forename: Heather
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Kember
authors.affiliation: Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders, Northeastern University, Boston, MA, USA.
authors.forename: Kathryn
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Connaghan
authors.affiliation: Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders, Northeastern University, Boston, MA, USA.|College of Computer and Information Science, Northeastern University, Boston, MA, USA.
authors.forename: Rupal
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Patel
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D000368:Aged; D016022:Case-Control Studies; D004401:Dysarthria / Q000175:diagnosis* / Q000503:physiopathology / Q000523:psychology; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D009043:Motor Activity; D009048:Motor Skills; D000074286:Preliminary Data; D013060:Speech; D013061:Speech Acoustics; D013065:Speech Intelligibility; D013068:Speech Production Measurement; D014059:Tongue / Q000503:physiopathology*
keywords: dysarthria; prosody; tongue twisters