A handful of studies have examined the effects of the Lee Silverman Voice Treatment (LSVT) LOUD on hypokinetic dysarthria in English speakers with Parkinson's disease (PD). Although LSVT LOUD has been found to be effective on improving these speaker's vocal intensity and increasing their speech intelligibility as well as speech function with Phase I evidence, no study has investigated whether Mandarin-speaking individuals with dysarthria secondary to PD would benefit from LSVT LOUD. In the proposed study, speech data of Mandarin-speaking individuals with hypokinetic dysarthria before and after speech therapy will be audio recorded and analyzed in order to examine the effects of LSVT LOUD on the speech function in this population. The same speech data will be played to Mandarin listeners in order to investigate the speech intelligibility of this population. It is hypothesized that Mandarin-speaking individuals with hypokinetic dysarthria secondary to PD will demonstrate reduced vocal intensity, reduced speech intelligibility and impaired speech function before they receive LSVT LOUD. They will improve these speech characteristics following speech therapy and will present with short-term maintenance effects.
Study Type
INTERVENTIONAL
Allocation
NA
Purpose
TREATMENT
Masking
SINGLE
Enrollment
40
National Taiwan University Hospital
Taipei, Taiwan, Taiwan
RECRUITINGSpeech intelligibility
Speech intelligibility will be assessed by native Mandarin listeners' orthographic transcription accuracy and ratings based on a nine-point Likert scale (from 1 - very difficult to understand to 9 - very easy to understand).
Time frame: Immediate
Speech function
Speech function will be assessed using acoustic methods. E.g., vowel formant frequencies correlated with vowel articulation will be extracted and analyzed using Praat software.
Time frame: Immdediate
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