Purpose: The aim of this study was to use acoustic and kinematic speech measures to characterize type of motor speech impairment--apraxia of speech (AOS) versus dysarthria--in individuals with four-repeat tauopathy (4RT)-associated syndromes, including nonfluent variant primary progressive aphasia (nfvPPA), primary progressive AOS (PPAOS),…

Purpose: There is increasing interest in using automatic speech recognition (ASR) systems to evaluate impairment severity or speech intelligibility in speakers with dysarthria. We assessed the clinical validity of one currently available off-the-shelf (OTS) ASR system (i.e., a Google Cloud ASR API) for indexing sentence-level speech…

Purpose: Hypernasality and atypical voice characteristics are common features of dysarthric speech due to amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS). Existing acoustic measures have been developed to primarily target either hypernasality or voice impairment, and the effects of co-occurring hypernasality-voice problems on these measures are unknown. This…

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to investigate the association between perceived single-word speech severity and intelligibility in children with childhood apraxia of speech (CAS), with and without comorbid language impairment (LI), and to investigate the contribution of different CAS signs to perceived single-word speech severity and…

Purpose: Oral diadochokinesis (DDK) is a standard dysarthria assessment task. To extract automatic and semi-automatic DDK measurements, numerous DDK analysis algorithms based on acoustic signal processing are available, including amplitude based, spectral based, and hybrid. However, these algorithms have been predominantly validated in individuals…

Purpose: Motor neuron diseases, such as amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), have a devastating effect on speech muscle function that often results in severe communication deficits. Over the course of bulbar disease, tongue and jaw movements are modified, but their impact on speech is poorly understood. The aim of this study was to determine the…

Purpose: The main purpose of this study was to create an empirical classification system for speech severity in patients with dysarthria secondary to amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) by exploring the reliability and validity of speech-language pathologists' (SLPs') ratings of dysarthric speech. Method: Ten SLPs listened to speech samples from…

Purpose: Despite having distinct etiologies, acquired apraxia of speech (AOS) and childhood apraxia of speech (CAS) share the same central diagnostic challenge (i.e., isolating markers specific to an impairment in speech motor planning/programming). The purpose of this review was to evaluate and compare the state of the evidence on approaches to…

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to determine the minimally detectable change (MDC) and minimal clinically important difference (MCID) of a decline in speech sentence intelligibility and speaking rate for individuals with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS). We also examined how the MDC and MCID vary across severities of dysarthria. Method:…

Purpose: The current research sought to determine (a) if speech inconsistency is a core feature of childhood apraxia of speech (CAS) or if it is driven by comorbid language impairment that affects a large subset of children with CAS and (b) if speech inconsistency is a sensitive and specific diagnostic marker that can differentiate between CAS and…

Purpose: The goal of this study was to identify the effects of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) on tongue and jaw control, both cross-sectionally and longitudinally. The data were examined in the context of their utility as a diagnostic marker of bulbar disease. Method: Tongue and jaw movements were recorded cross-sectionally (n = 33…

Purpose: The primary aim of the investigation was to identify deficits in spatiotemporal coupling between tongue regions in amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS). The relations between disease-related changes in tongue movement patterns and speech intelligibility were also determined. Methods: The authors recorded word productions from 11…

Purpose: The goal of this study was to determine if talkers with ALS are limited in their ability to increase lower lip and jaw speed at an early stage of the disease when their speaking rate and intelligibility are only minimally or not affected. Method: A novel metronome paced fixed-target task was used to assess movement speed capacities during…