ARTICULATORY KINEMATICS IN NEUROGENIC SPEECH DISORDERS

这项建议涉及与帕金森病(PD)和肌萎缩侧索硬化症(ALS)相关的神经原性语音障碍的语音清晰度缺陷的发音基础。这项拟议的工作使用X射线微束(发音运动学)、语音声学和语音清晰度测量来解决主要的描述性需求，以及几个假设。主要的描述性需求是对神经性言语障碍中发音行为的语言运动范围几乎一无所知；在过去的30年里，人们致力于口述运动非言语行为与言语可理解性之间的可能关系的大量研究，但现有文献认为，这不是理解言语产生过程中言语发音的正确方法。这解释了当前提案的描述性目标，该提案利用仔细定义的语音工作空间的测量(即音域的参数化)来发音。一个相关的描述性目标是确定ALS患者在说话过程中的下颌运动是否比PD患者更大，以及是否因此舌头工作空间因此而受到下颌运动的不同影响。其中一个假设利用了这些运动学工作空间参数，声称元音的语音(发音运动学)工作空间、元音声学空间(F1-F2图的面积)或共振峰范围与语音清晰度之间应该存在关系，具体地说，假设语音工作空间的减少将与元音声学工作空间的减少和语音可懂度的降低相关。这一假设将在上述每个疾病组(N=每组20名患者)以及所有患者(N=40名)中进行测试。第二个假设是，相对于神经学正常的说话者，VCV序列中连续发音手势的相对相位会延迟。这一假说源于临床和经验观察，即许多神经性言语障碍患者的协同发音减少(或者用另一种行话说，减少了重叠)。这项建议的最终目标是启动神经源性语音障碍的声道建模研究，其中模型的输入是X射线微束数据和观察到的语音频谱的形式；这项工作的目标是改进从神经源性语音障碍患者收集的语音声学数据的发音推断。用声道模型检验的最后一个假设是，与正常说话者相比，构音障碍说话者在实现元音频谱方面的发音自由度较少。

This proposal deals with the articulatory underpinnings of speech intelligibility deficits in the neurogenic speech disorders associated with Parkinson disease (PD) and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS). The proposed work uses x-ray microbeam (articulatory kinematic), speech acoustic, and speech intelligibility measures to address a major descriptive need, as well as several hypotheses. The major descriptive need is that virtually nothing is known about lingual ranges of motion for articulatory behavior in neurogenic speech disorders; over the last thirty years a substantial research effort has been devoted to possible relationships between oromotor non-verbal behavior and speech intelligibility, but it is argued from the available literature that this is not the right approach to understanding speech articulators during speech production. This explains the descriptive aim of the current proposal, which make use of carefully-defined measures of the phonetic working space (i.e., parameterizations of ranges) for articulation. An associated descriptive goal is to determine if jaw movement during speech is greater for ALS, as compared to PD speakers, and if the lingual working spaces are therefore differentially affected across group by mandibular motions. One of the hypotheses makes use of these kinematic working space parameters by claiming that there should be a relationship between measures of the phonetic (articulatory kinematic) working space for vowels, and acoustic vowel space (area of an F1-F2 plot) or formant ranges on the one hand, and speech intelligibility on the other hand, Specifically, the hypothesis is that reduced phonetic working spaces will be associated with reduced acoustic vowel working spaces and reduced speech intelligibility. The hypothesis will be tested both within each of the disease groups mentioned above (N=20 patients per group), as well as across all patients (N=40). A second hypothesis is that the relative phasing of successive articulatory gestures in VCV sequences will be delayed relative to the phasing observed in neurologically-normal speakers. This hypothesis grows out of both clinical and empirical observations of reduced co- articulation (or, in an alternative jargon, reduced overlap) among many speakers with neurogenic speech disorders. The final aim of this proposal is to initiate vocal tract modeling studies of neurogenic speech disorders, where the input to the model is in the form of the x- ray microbeam data and observed speech spectra; the goal of this work is to improve articulatory inferences from speech acoustic data collected from persons with neurogenic speech disorders. A final hypothesis, to be tested with the vocal tract model, is that dysarthric speakers have fewer articulatory degrees of freedom in realizing vowel spectra, as compared to normal speakers.