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Connaghan KP, Green JR, Eshghi M, Haenssler AE, Scheier ZA, Clark A, Iyer A, Richburg BD, Rowe HP, Okada J, Johnson SA, Onnela JP, Burke KM, Berry JD. The relationship of rate and pause features to the communicative participation of people living with ALS. Muscle Nerve 2024; 70:217-225. [PMID: 38837773 PMCID: PMC11229383 DOI: 10.1002/mus.28170] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 08/22/2023] [Revised: 05/02/2024] [Accepted: 05/12/2024] [Indexed: 06/07/2024]
Abstract
INTRODUCTION/AIMS Many people living with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (PALS) report restrictions in their day-to-day communication (communicative participation). However, little is known about which speech features contribute to these restrictions. This study evaluated the effects of common speech symptoms in PALS (reduced overall speaking rate, slowed articulation rate, and increased pausing) on communicative participation restrictions. METHODS Participants completed surveys (the Communicative Participation Item Bank-short form; the self-entry version of the ALS Functional Rating Scale-Revised) and recorded themselves reading the Bamboo Passage aloud using a smartphone app. Rate and pause measures were extracted from the recordings. The association of various demographic, clinical, self-reported, and acoustic speech features with communicative participation was evaluated with bivariate correlations. The contribution of salient rate and pause measures to communicative participation was assessed using multiple linear regression. RESULTS Fifty seven people living with ALS participated in the study (mean age = 61.1 years). Acoustic and self-report measures of speech and bulbar function were moderately to highly associated with communicative participation (Spearman rho coefficients ranged from rs = 0.48 to rs = 0.77). A regression model including participant age, sex, articulation rate, and percent pause time accounted for 57% of the variance of communicative participation ratings. DISCUSSION Even though PALS with slowed articulation rate and increased pausing may convey their message clearly, these speech features predict communicative participation restrictions. The identification of quantitative speech features, such as articulation rate and percent pause time, is critical to facilitating early and targeted intervention and for monitoring bulbar decline in ALS.
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Affiliation(s)
- Kathryn P Connaghan
- Speech and Social Interaction Lab, MGH Institute of Health Professions, Boston, Massachusetts, USA
| | - Jordan R Green
- Speech and Feeding Disorders Lab, MGH Institute of Health Professions, Boston, Massachusetts, USA
- Program in Speech and Hearing Bioscience and Technology, Harvard University, Boston, Massachusetts, USA
| | - Marziye Eshghi
- Speech, Physiology, and Neurobiology of Aging and Dementia Lab, MGH Institute of Health Professions, Boston, Massachusetts, USA
- Athinoula A. Martinos Centre for Biomedical Imaging, Boston, Massachusetts, USA
- Department of Radiology, MGH, Harvard Medical School, Boston, Massachusetts, USA
| | - Abigail E Haenssler
- Speech and Social Interaction Lab, MGH Institute of Health Professions, Boston, Massachusetts, USA
- Speech and Feeding Disorders Lab, MGH Institute of Health Professions, Boston, Massachusetts, USA
| | - Zoe A Scheier
- Healey Center for ALS, Department of Neurology, Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston, Massachusetts, USA
| | - Alison Clark
- Healey Center for ALS, Department of Neurology, Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston, Massachusetts, USA
| | - Amrita Iyer
- Healey Center for ALS, Department of Neurology, Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston, Massachusetts, USA
| | - Brian D Richburg
- Speech and Feeding Disorders Lab, MGH Institute of Health Professions, Boston, Massachusetts, USA
| | - Hannah P Rowe
- Speech Neuroscience Lab, Boston University, Boston, Massachusetts, USA
| | - June Okada
- Speech and Social Interaction Lab, MGH Institute of Health Professions, Boston, Massachusetts, USA
- Speech and Feeding Disorders Lab, MGH Institute of Health Professions, Boston, Massachusetts, USA
| | - Stephen A Johnson
- Department of Neurology, Mayo Clinic Arizona, Scottsdale, Arizona, USA
| | - Jukka-Pekka Onnela
- Department of Biostatistics, Harvard University, Boston, Massachusetts, USA
| | - Katherine M Burke
- Healey Center for ALS, Department of Neurology, Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston, Massachusetts, USA
| | - James D Berry
- Healey Center for ALS, Department of Neurology, Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston, Massachusetts, USA
- Harvard Medical School, School of Medicine, Boston, Massachusetts, USA
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Pham CT, Viswanathan N. Studying Conversational Adjustments in Interaction: Beyond Acoustic Phonetic Changes. JOURNAL OF SPEECH, LANGUAGE, AND HEARING RESEARCH : JSLHR 2024; 67:196-210. [PMID: 38099864 DOI: 10.1044/2023_jslhr-23-00268] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 01/10/2024]
Abstract
PURPOSE We examined which measures of complexity are most informative when studying language produced in interaction. Specifically, using these measures, we explored whether native and nonnative speakers modified the higher level properties of their production beyond the acoustic-phonetic level based on the language background of their conversation partner. METHOD Using a subset of production data from the Wildcat Corpus that used Diapix, an interactive picture matching task, to elicit production, we compared English language production at the dyad and individual level across three different pair types: eight native pairs (English-English), eight mixed pairs (four English-Chinese and four English-Korean), and eight nonnative pairs (four Chinese-Chinese and four Korean-Korean). RESULTS At both the dyad and individual levels, native speakers produced longer and more clausally dense speech. They also produced fewer silent pauses and fewer linguistic mazes relative to nonnative speakers. Speakers did not modify their production based on the language background of their interlocutor. CONCLUSIONS The current study examines higher level properties of language production in true interaction. Our results suggest that speakers' productions were determined by their own language background and were independent of that of their interlocutor. Furthermore, these demonstrated promise for capturing syntactic characteristics of language produced in true dialogue. SUPPLEMENTAL MATERIAL https://doi.org/10.23641/asha.24712956.
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Affiliation(s)
- Catherine T Pham
- Department of Psychology, The Pennsylvania State University, University Park
| | - Navin Viswanathan
- Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders, The Pennsylvania State University, University Park
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Hong Y, Chen S, Zhou F, Chan A, Tang T. Phonetic entrainment in L2 human-robot interaction: an investigation of children with and without autism spectrum disorder. Front Psychol 2023; 14:1128976. [PMID: 37404579 PMCID: PMC10315851 DOI: 10.3389/fpsyg.2023.1128976] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 12/21/2022] [Accepted: 05/19/2023] [Indexed: 07/06/2023] Open
Abstract
Phonetic entrainment is a phenomenon in which people adjust their phonetic features to approach those of their conversation partner. Individuals with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) have been reported to show some deficits in entrainment during their interactions with human interlocutors, though deficits in terms of significant differences from typically developing (TD) controls were not always registered. One reason related to the inconsistencies of whether deficits are detected or not in autistic individuals is that the conversation partner's speech could hardly be controlled, and both the participants and the partners might be adjusting their phonetic features. The variabilities in the speech of conversation partners and various social traits exhibited might make the phonetic entrainment (if any) of the participants less detectable. In this study, we attempted to reduce the variability of the interlocutors by employing a social robot and having it do a goal-directed conversation task with children with and without ASD. Fourteen autistic children and 12 TD children participated the current study in their second language English. Results showed that autistic children showed comparable vowel formants and mean fundamental frequency (f0) entrainment as their TD peers, but they did not entrain their f0 range as the TD group did. These findings suggest that autistic children were capable of exhibiting phonetic entrainment behaviors similar to TD children in vowel formants and f0, particularly in a less complex situation where the speech features and social traits of the interlocutor were controlled. Furthermore, the utilization of a social robot may have increased the interest of these children in phonetic entrainment. On the other hand, entrainment of f0 range was more challenging for these autistic children even in a more controlled situation. This study demonstrates the viability and potential of using human-robot interactions as a novel method to evaluate abilities and deficits in phonetic entrainment in autistic children.
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Affiliation(s)
- Yitian Hong
- Department of Chinese and Bilingual Studies, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Hong Kong, Hong Kong SAR, China
| | - Si Chen
- Department of Chinese and Bilingual Studies, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Hong Kong, Hong Kong SAR, China
- Department of Chinese and Bilingual Studies, Research Centre for Language, Cognition, and Neuroscience, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Hong Kong, Hong Kong SAR, China
- Research Institute for Smart Ageing, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Hong Kong, Hong Kong SAR, China
- The HK PolyU-PekingU Research Centre on Chinese Linguistics, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Hong Kong, Hong Kong SAR, China
| | - Fang Zhou
- Department of Chinese and Bilingual Studies, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Hong Kong, Hong Kong SAR, China
| | - Angel Chan
- Department of Chinese and Bilingual Studies, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Hong Kong, Hong Kong SAR, China
- Department of Chinese and Bilingual Studies, Research Centre for Language, Cognition, and Neuroscience, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Hong Kong, Hong Kong SAR, China
- The HK PolyU-PekingU Research Centre on Chinese Linguistics, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Hong Kong, Hong Kong SAR, China
| | - Tempo Tang
- Department of Chinese and Bilingual Studies, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Hong Kong, Hong Kong SAR, China
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