MATLAB Reference Implementation and Supporting Praat Scripts (Cummins et al., 2014)

Purpose Following recent attempts to quantify articulatory impairment in speech, the present study evaluates the usefulness of a novel measure of motor stability to characterize dysarthria.

Method The study included 8 speakers with ataxic dysarthria (AD), 16 speakers with hypokinetic dysarthria (HD) as a result of Parkinson's disease, and 24 unimpaired control participants. Each participant performed a series of sentence repetitions under habitual, fast, and slow speaking rate conditions. An algorithm to measure utterance-to-utterance spectro-temporal variation (UUV; Cummins, 2009) was used. Speech rate and intelligibility were also measured.

Results UUV scores were significantly correlated with perceptually based intelligibility scores. There were significant differences in UUV between control speakers and the AD but not the HD groups, presumably because of differences in intelligibility in the samples used and not because of differences in pathology. Habitual speaking rate did not correlate with UUV scores. All speaker groups had greater UUV levels in the slow conditions compared with habitual and fast speaking rates.

Conclusions UUV results were consistent with those of other variability indices and thus appear to capture motor control issues in a similar way. The results suggest that the UUV could be developed into an easy-to-use clinical tool that could function as a valid and reliable assessment and outcome measure.

目的：鉴于近期对言语中发音障碍进行量化的尝试，本研究评估了一种新型运动稳定性测量方法在表征构音障碍方面的有效性。
方法：研究纳入了8名患有共济失调性构音障碍（AD）的说话者，16名患有帕金森病引起的运动减少性构音障碍（HD）的说话者，以及24名无障碍的正常对照组参与者。每位参与者均在习惯性、快速和慢速言语速率条件下执行了一系列句子重复任务。研究中使用了用于测量言语片段间声谱时变性的算法（UUV；Cummins，2009）。同时，也测量了言语速率和可懂度。
结果：UUV评分与感知基础的可懂度评分显著相关。在控制组说话者与AD组之间观察到UUV存在显著差异，而HD组则未观察到，这可能是由于样本中可懂度的差异所导致，而非病理学上的差异。习惯性言语速率与UUV评分之间不存在相关性。所有说话者组在慢速条件下的UUV水平均高于习惯性和快速言语速率。
结论：UUV的结果与其他变异性指标一致，因此似乎以相似的方式捕捉运动控制问题。结果表明，UUV有望开发成为一种易于使用的临床工具，可作为有效且可靠的评估和结果测量手段。