Can you hear the speech disorder?
Reviewed by Anna Volkmer

Dysarthria is often the first or most pronounced feature of a Parkinson’s disease (PD) presentation, yet may be difficult to discern from normal ageing changes that impact voice and speech. Thus, it is important to be able to differentiate in order to appropriately manage a potential progressive neurological disorder. Two of the most common approaches to measuring speech disorders are the use of transcription of sentences as a measure of intelligibility or rating domains such as hypernasality and voice on a scale by a listener. The former is considered more time consuming but accurate, whilst the latter is considered quicker but less reliable, particularly where the listener is less experienced. The aim of this study was to compare the intelligibility of people with PD (n=15), healthy older adults (n=15) and healthy younger adults (n=15) across both measures when rated by experienced (n=4) and inexperienced listeners (n=4). Results demonstrated that people with PD were rated as significantly less intelligible and significantly more severe than older people without PD and younger people. There was no difference between the other two groups. More experienced listeners were more reliable than less experienced listeners. The authors conclude that the more training an individual is given, the more reliable their use of rating will be but, given the need for training, this may result in an equally time-consuming approach as transcription. Identifying reliability and concurrently considering economy of use is likely to maximise implementation of measures in a real clinical setting.

A Comparative Study of Auditory-Perceptual Speech Measures for the Early Detection of Mild Speech Impairments.
Kuruvilla-Dugdale M, Threlkeld K, Salazar M, et al.
SEMINARS IN SPEECH AND LANGUAGE
2019;40(5):394-406.