Assessing Communicative Efficiency in Parkinson's Disease
Author Information
Author(s): Heidi Martens, Gwen Van Nuffelen, Patrick Cras, Barbara Pickut, Miet De Letter, Marc De Bodt
Primary Institution: Antwerp University Hospital
Hypothesis
Do healthy and PD speakers perform differently on expressing prosodic functions?
Conclusion
Professional listeners found it harder to identify prosodic functions in PD speakers, especially those with moderate or severe dysarthria, compared to healthy speakers.
Supporting Evidence
- Healthy speakers performed significantly better than PD patients on imitation tasks for Boundary Marking, Focus, and Sentence Typing.
- PD patients with moderate or severe dysarthria had significantly lower identification scores in imitation tasks.
- Emotional Prosody tasks yielded low correct identification scores across all groups.
Takeaway
This study looked at how well people with Parkinson's disease can use tone and rhythm in their speech, and found that they often struggle more than healthy people.
Methodology
The study used reading and imitation tasks to assess prosodic functions in 36 Dutch-speaking adults, including 18 with Parkinson's disease and 18 healthy controls.
Potential Biases
Potential bias in the assessment due to the fixed order of tasks and the subjective nature of listener judgments.
Limitations
The study had a small and uneven sample size for PD speakers, which may affect the generalizability of the results.
Participant Demographics
Participants included 18 PD patients (7 men, 11 women) aged 47-82 and 18 healthy controls matched for gender and age.
Statistical Information
P-Value
p<0.001
Statistical Significance
p<0.05
Digital Object Identifier (DOI)
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