A Systematic Investigation of Phonetic Complexity Effects on Articulatory Motor Performance in Progressive Dysarthria

Not Applicable

Completed

• Conditions: Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis; Parkinson Disease
• Interventions: Behavioral: Phonetic complexity effects on speech motor performance

• Registration Number: NCT03613038
• Lead Sponsor: University of Missouri-Columbia

Brief Summary

The goal is to improve the fundamental knowledge about articulatory motor performance in people with Lou Gehrig's disease (also known as ALS) and Parkinson's disease (PD), in order to develop more sensitive assessments for progressive speech loss, which may lead to the improved timing of speech therapies.

Detailed Description

The long-term goal is to optimize dysarthria assessment by improving the early detection and tracking of articulatory performance in progressive dysarthrias. The short-term goal of the proposed cross-sectional study is to focus on ALS and PD and quantify articulatory kinematic performance as a function of phonetic complexity, which is experimentally manipulated based on theoretical principles of speech motor development. The research strategy is to use 3D electromagnetic articulography to examine phonetic complexity effects of single word stimuli at the articulatory kinematic level in 15 talkers each with preclinical, mild, and moderate dysarthria, relative to 45 controls. The central hypothesis is that as dysarthria severity increases the discrepancy in articulatory performance, indexed by movement speed, distance, coordination, and variability, between people with dysarthria and typical controls will significantly increase at a lower phonetic complexity level.

Study Timeline

• Study Start: 2017-07-15
• Study First Submitted: 2018-07-10
• Study First Submitted QC: 2018-07-27
• Study First Posted: 2018-08-02
• Primary Completion: 2022-02-28
• Study Completion: 2022-02-28
• Status Verified: 2022-05
• Last Update Submitted: 2022-05-16
• Last Update Posted: 2022-05-17

Recruitment & Eligibility

• Status: COMPLETED
• Sex: All
• Target Recruitment: 100

Inclusion Criteria

1. May or may not have a neurological impairment.
2. Age range of 19-90 years.
3. Male or female.
4. Provide written consent before any study specific procedures are performed.
5. Have ability to comply with basic instructions.
6. Monolingual English speaker.
7. Have ability to partake in a 90 minute data collection.

Exclusion Criteria

1. Any speech, language, cognition, or hearing impairment prior to diagnosis of a neurodegenerative disease.
2. Anyone not appropriate for study participation, as deemed by the principal investigator.

Study & Design

• Study Type: INTERVENTIONAL
• Study Design: SINGLE_GROUP

Arm && Interventions

Group	Intervention	Description
Phonetic complexity effects	Phonetic complexity effects on speech motor performance	Conduct a comprehensive kinematic assessment using state-of-the art 3D speech tracking technology on individuals with ALS and PD as well as healthy talkers to identify articulatory motor disturbances as a function of phonetic complexity and dysarthria severity. Phonetic complexity will be experimentally manipulated using the consonant and vowel complexity classification system proposed by Kent (1992) that takes into account the underlying articulatory motor adjustments required to produce various speech sounds.

Primary Outcome Measures

Name	Time	Method
Duration	Up to 3 months after enrollment	Word duration (seconds) is the time between onset and offset of movement for each word.
Inter-articulator coordination	Up to 3 months after enrollment	Spatiotemporal coupling relations between articulators will be derived from vertical movements of the articulators using a covariance measure.
Peak movement speed	Up to 3 months after enrollment	Peak speed (millimeters/second) for each articulatory marker is the maximum value of the first-order derivative of each marker's Euclidean distance time-history.
Spatiotemporal movement variability (STI)	Up to 3 months after enrollment	STI is the most widely used metric to capture movement pattern variability during speech. To determine STI, the pattern of articulatory movements and the variability of that pattern over several repetitions of an utterance are examined.
Range of movement	Up to 3 months after enrollment	The convex hull represents the smallest convex set containing all the points in the 3D motion path.

Trial Locations

Locations (2)

University of Kansas Medical Center; 🇺🇸 Fairway, Kansas, United States

University of Missouri-Columbia; 🇺🇸 Columbia, Missouri, United States