Quantifying Articulatory Working Space in Individuals Surgically Treated for Oral Cancer With Electromagnetic Articulography.

PURPOSE: The purpose of this study was to quantify sentence-level articulatory kinematics in individuals treated for oral squamous cell carcinoma (ITOC) compared to control speakers while also assessing the effect of treatment site (jaw vs. tongue). Furthermore, this study aimed to assess the relation between articulatory-kinematic measures and self-reported speech problems. METHOD: Articulatory-kinematic data from the tongue tip, tongue back, and jaw were collected using electromagnetic articulography in nine Dutch ITOC and eight control speakers. To quantify articulatory kinematics, the two-dimensional articulatory working space (AWS; in mm2), one-dimensional anteroposterior range of motion (AP-ROM; in mm), and superior-inferior range of motion (SI-ROM in mm) were calculated and examined. Self-reported speech problems were assessed with the Speech Handicap Index (SHI). RESULTS: Compared to a sex-matched control group, ITOC showed significantly smaller AWS, AP-ROM, and SI-ROM for both the tongue tip and tongue back sensor, but no significant differences were observed for the jaw sensor. This pattern was found for both individuals treated for tongue and jaw tumors. Moderate nonsignificant correlations were found between the SHI and the AWS of the tongue back and jaw sensors. CONCLUSIONS: Despite large individual variation, ITOC showed reduced one- and two-dimensional tongue, but not jaw, movements compared to control speakers and treatment for tongue and jaw tumors resulted in smaller tongue movements. A larger sample size is needed to establish a more generalizable connection between the AWS and the SHI. Further research should explore how these kinematic changes in ITOC are related to acoustic and perceptual measures of speech.

Objective speech outcomes after surgical treatment for oral cancer: An acoustic analysis of a spontaneous speech corpus containing 32.850 tokens.

INTRODUCTION: Surgical treatment for oral cancer leads to lasting changes of the vocal tract and individuals treated for oral cancer (ITOC) often experience speech problems. The purpose of this study was to analyse the acoustic properties of the spontaneous speech of individuals who were surgically treated for oral cancer. It was investigated (1) how key spectral measures of articulation change post-treatment; (2) whether changes are more related to target manner or place of articulation; and (3) how spectral measures develop at various time points following treatment. METHOD: A corpus consisting of 32.850 tokens was constructed by manually segmenting the speech of five (four female - one male) American English speaking ITOC. General acoustic characteristics (duration and spectral tilt), plosives (burst frequency), fricatives (centre of gravity and spectral skewness), and vowels (F1 and F2) were analysed using linear mixed effects regression and compared to control speech. Moreover, a within speaker analysis was performed for speakers with multiple recordings. RESULTS: Manner of articulation is more predictive of post-treatment changes than place of articulation. Compared to controls, ITOC produced the fricatives /f, v, θ, ð, s, z, ʃ, ʒ/ with a lower centre of gravity while no differences were found for plosives and vowels. Longitudinal analyses show high within-speaker variation, but general improvements one-year post-treatment. CONCLUSIONS: Surgical oral cancer treatment changes the spectral properties of speech. Fricatives with varying manner of articulations were distorted, suggesting that manner of articulation is more predictive than place of articulation in identifying general problem areas for ITOC.