Gait change in tongue movement.

During locomotion, humans switch gaits from walking to running, and horses from walking to trotting to cantering to galloping, as they increase their movement rate. It is unknown whether gait change leading to a wider movement rate range is limited to locomotive-type behaviours, or instead is a general property of any rate-varying motor system. The tongue during speech provides a motor system that can address this gap. In controlled speech experiments, using phrases containing complex tongue-movement sequences, we demonstrate distinct gaits in tongue movement at different speech rates. As speakers widen their tongue-front displacement range, they gain access to wider speech-rate ranges. At the widest displacement ranges, speakers also produce categorically different patterns for their slowest and fastest speech. Speakers with the narrowest tongue-front displacement ranges show one stable speech-gait pattern, and speakers with widest ranges show two. Critical fluctuation analysis of tongue motion over the time-course of speech revealed these speakers used greater effort at the beginning of phrases-such end-state-comfort effects indicate speech planning. Based on these findings, we expect that categorical motion solutions may emerge in any motor system, providing that system with access to wider movement-rate ranges.

Estudio controlado del ritmo del habla en la enfermedad de Parkinson / Speech rate in Parkinson's disease: A controlled study

Introducción: Las alteraciones en el habla aparecen en la mayoría de los pacientes con la enfermedad de Parkinson (EP) en el curso del trastorno. Su origen y gravedad son de interés clínico y diagnóstico. Objetivo: Evaluar los patrones de deterioro en el habla en pacientes con la EP, e identificar diferencias en la velocidad de elocución y articulación en comparación con sujetos de control, empleando un método de análisis automático en una tarea de lectura. Pacientes: Participaron 39 pacientes con la EP y 45 controles asintomáticos igualados en sexo y edad. Los pacientes con la EP, en estado on, no presentaban fluctuaciones motoras ni discinesias durante la evaluación del habla. Resultados: El grupo de pacientes con la EP muestran una significativa reducción de la velocidad de elocución y articulación. No se encontraron correlaciones significativas entre los parámetros del habla estudiados y las características de los pacientes, tales como la dosis de L-dopa, duración del trastorno, edad, ni en las puntuaciones en las escalas UPDRS III o Hoehn y Yahr. Conclusiones: Los pacientes con la EP muestran un patrón característico de deterioro del ritmo del habla. Estos resultados indican que las disfluencias en la EP son el resultado de la alteración del movimiento que afecta a la fisiología de los sistemas de producción del habla

Introduction: Speech disturbances will affect most patients with Parkinson's disease (PD) over the course of the disease. The origin and severity of these symptoms are of clinical and diagnostic interest. Purpose: To evaluate the clinical pattern of speech impairment in PD patients and identify significant differences in speech rate and articulation compared to control subjects. Speech rate and articulation in a reading task were measured using an automatic analytical method. Patients: A total of 39 PD patients in the ‘on’ state and 45 age-and sex-matched asymptomatic controls participated in the study. None of the patients experienced dyskinesias or motor fluctuations during the test. Results: The patients with PD displayed a significant reduction in speech and articulation rates; there were no significant correlations between the studied speech parameters and patient characteristics such as L-dopa dose, duration of the disorder, age, and UPDRS III scores and Hoehn & Yahr scales. Conclusion: atients with PD show a characteristic pattern of declining speech rate. These results suggest that in PD, disfluencies are the result of the movement disorder affecting the physiology of speech production systems

Eficacia del entrenamiento en praxias fonoarticulatorias en los trastornos de los sonidos del habla en niños de 4 años / Efficacy of training on phonoarticulatory exercises in speech sound disorders in 4-year-old children

Durante el desarrollo del lenguaje, algunos niños encuentran dificultades para articular fonemas o grupos consonánticos, sin que haya una causa neurológica ni orgánica aparente. El tratamiento de estas dificultades ha comprendido técnicas diversas, otorgando poca importancia a las praxias fonoarticulatorias. Estas praxias consisten en la realización de movimientos programados y organizados de forma intencional y coordinada dirigidos a controlar los músculos faciales y los órganos activos de la articulación, como son lengua, labios y paladar blando. Ante la falta de conocimiento sobre la relevancia de estas praxias para la prevención y tratamiento de las dificultades articulatorias en los trastornos de los sonidos del habla, nos planteamos como objetivo aplicar un programa de intervención en una muestra de niños de 4 años con problemas articulatorios. Para ello, se evaluó a un grupo de 25 niños de 4.6 años de media de edad. De ellos, 15 no tenían adquiridos todos los fonemas, de modo que fueron distribuidos en un grupo de tratamiento (8 niños) y un grupo de control (7 niños). Los niños del grupo de tratamiento se sometieron a un programa de intervención de 2 sesiones semanales de 30-45 min cada una durante un periodo de 3 meses. Finalizado el tratamiento, los 15 niños fueron evaluados de nuevo y se hizo un seguimiento 10 meses después. Los resultados muestran una tendencia a la mejora en el grupo de tratamiento que además se mantiene en los 10 meses posteriores, y esto es especialmente significativo para los niños con alteraciones más graves, es decir, más de 7 fonemas sin producir (AU)

In language development, some children find difficulties in pronouncing certain phonemes or groups of phonemes, in absence of a clear neurological or organic cause. The intervention on these difficulties has implied different techniques, but it has paid little attention to phonoarticulatory exercises. These exercises consist of programmed movements organised in an intentional and coordinated way, and focused in controlling facial muscles and articulatory active organs, such as the tongue, lips and soft palate. As there is little knowledge about the relevance of motor training to prevent and treat articulatory problems in speech sound disorders, our aim was to apply an intervention program in a sample of four-year-olds with these kinds of difficulties. Thus, 25 children with a mean age of 4.6 years were assessed. 15 of them had missing phonemes or groups of phonemes, so they were distributed in a treatment group (8 children) and a control group (7 children). The 8 children in the experimental group underwent an intervention program with two weekly 30-45 minutes sessions for a period of 3 months. Once the treatment was finished, the 15 children were again assessed and a following test was done 10 months afterwards. Results show a trend of improvement, in the experimental group, that remains for the following 10 months, and this is especially significant for the subjects with more severe disorders, that is, with more than seven missing phonemes (AU)

Super-imposing maxillary and palatal locations for electroarticulometry: A SIMPLE method.

This study proposes a method of superimposing a physical palatal profile, extracted from a speaker's maxillary impression, onto real-time mid-sagittal articulatory data. A palatal/dental profile is first obtained by three-dimensional-scanning the maxillary impression of the speaker. Then a high resolution mid-sagittal palatal line, extracted from the profile, is sub-divided into articulatory zones and superimposed, by Iterative Closest Point algorithm, onto reconstructed palatal traces in electromagnetic articulometric (EMA) data. Evaluations were carried out by comparing consonant targets elicited by EMA with the proposed method and by static palatography. The proposed method yields accurate results, as supported by palatography.

High-resolution dynamic speech imaging with joint low-rank and sparsity constraints.

PURPOSE: To enable dynamic speech imaging with high spatiotemporal resolution and full-vocal-tract spatial coverage, leveraging recent advances in sparse sampling. METHODS: An imaging method is developed to enable high-speed dynamic speech imaging exploiting low-rank and sparsity of the dynamic images of articulatory motion during speech. The proposed method includes: (a) a novel data acquisition strategy that collects spiral navigators with high temporal frame rate and (b) an image reconstruction method that derives temporal subspaces from navigators and reconstructs high-resolution images from sparsely sampled data with joint low-rank and sparsity constraints. RESULTS: The proposed method has been systematically evaluated and validated through several dynamic speech experiments. A nominal imaging speed of 102 frames per second (fps) was achieved for a single-slice imaging protocol with a spatial resolution of 2.2 × 2.2 × 6.5 mm(3) . An eight-slice imaging protocol covering the entire vocal tract achieved a nominal imaging speed of 12.8 fps with the identical spatial resolution. The effectiveness of the proposed method and its practical utility was also demonstrated in a phonetic investigation. CONCLUSION: High spatiotemporal resolution with full-vocal-tract spatial coverage can be achieved for dynamic speech imaging experiments with low-rank and sparsity constraints.

Numerical instabilities and three-dimensional electromagnetic articulography.

The AG500 electromagnetic articulograph is widely used to reconstruct the movements of the articulatory organs. Nevertheless, some anomalies in its performance have been observed. It is well known that accuracy of the device is affected by electromagnetic interference and possible hardware failures or damage to the sensors. In this study, after eliminating any hardware or electromagnetic source of disturbance, a set of trials was carried out. The tests prove that anomalies in sensor position tracking are systematic in certain regions within the recording volume and, more importantly, show a specific pattern that can be clearly attributed to a wrong convergence of the calculation method.

Lingual kinematics during rapid syllable repetition in Parkinson's disease.

BACKGROUND: Rapid syllable repetition tasks are commonly used in the assessment of motor speech disorders. However, little is known about the articulatory kinematics during rapid syllable repetition in individuals with Parkinson's disease (PD). AIMS: To investigate and compare lingual kinematics during rapid syllable repetition in dysarthric speakers with PD (DPD), non-dysarthric speakers with PD (NDPD) and a group of healthy controls. METHODS & PROCEDURES: Electromagnetic articulography was used to record tongue-tip and tongue-back movement in five DPD and five NDPD participants during rapid repetition of /ta/and /ka/syllables, and matched with six healthy controls. OUTCOMES & RESULTS: Results revealed significant between-group differences for most of the kinematic parameters measured but comparable rapid syllable repetition rates. Post-hoc analyses indicated that the DPD participants, when compared with the NDPD participants, had similar range but prolonged duration of lingual movement. The DPD and NDPD participants had primarily increased range and prolonged duration of lingual movement accompanied by increased speed parameters, when compared with healthy controls. CONCLUSIONS & IMPLICATIONS: The findings of the present study contradict theories that suggest that the clinical features of hypokinetic dysarthria, including articulatory imprecision, are the outcome of restrictions in the range of movement of the muscles of the articulators. The observed prolonged duration of lingual movement in PD may plausibly be due to the observed increased range of lingual movement rather than slowness of lingual movement.

Dynamics of posterior tongue during pronunciation and voluntary tongue lift movement in young adults.

The lifting-up movement of the posterior part of the tongue to touch the palate, which is a requirement for performing physiological functions such as deglutition and speech, is an important phenomenon that is difficult to objectively evaluate. The purpose of this study was to develop a new modality to evaluate the tongue-lifting function, especially in the posterior part of the tongue, and to elucidate the dynamic properties of the tongue in normal subjects. Twenty-three healthy volunteers (9 men and 14 women; mean age, 27·6years) participated in this study. A new device was developed that could evaluate the up-down movement of the posterior part of the tongue in a non-invasive manner. The experimental tasks were as follows: (i) /a/ pronunciation for 1s followed by /ka/ pronunciation (a-ka task), (ii) /a/ pronunciation for 1s followed by /ga/ pronunciation (a-ga task) and (iii) /a/ pronunciation for 1s followed by a voluntary push-up movement of the posterior part of the tongue (a-lift task). Maximum upward velocity in the a-ga task was larger than that in the a-ka task (P<0·05). The a-lift task showed the highest tongue lift range among the three tasks, and the a-ga task showed a higher range than that of the a-ka task (P<0·05). This study revealed that precise quantification of the motility of the posterior part of the tongue, which would be useful in rehabilitation of articulation and/or swallowing, could be achieved using this new device in a non-invasive manner.

Developmental changes in the variability of tongue and lip movements during speech from childhood to adulthood: an EMA study.

This study investigated the developmental variability of lip and tongue movement in 48 children and adults. Motion of the tongue-tip, tongue-body and lower lip was recorded using electromagnetic articulography during productions of sentences containing /t/, /s/, /l/, /k/ and /p/. Four groups of speakers participated in the study: (1) aged 6-7 years; (2) 8-11 years; (3) 12-17 years; and (4) adults. The variation in distance, duration, speed, acceleration and deceleration of the articulators during single open-close speech movements was analysed, and the stability of multiple movement sequences was examined using the spatiotemporal index. The experimental findings revealed a gradual developmental progression from 6 years to adulthood. At adolescence, speakers continued to exhibit significantly more variable speech motor output compared to adult speakers. The observed developmental pattern suggests that attenuated, but important, changes in the speech motor system occurs from mid-childhood, through adolescence, to adulthood.

A novel fixed-target task to determine articulatory speed constraints in persons with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis.

PURPOSE: The goal of this study was to determine if talkers with ALS are limited in their ability to increase lower lip and jaw speed at an early stage of the disease when their speaking rate and intelligibility are only minimally or not affected. METHOD: A novel metronome paced fixed-target task was used to assess movement speed capacities during lower lip and jaw oscillations in seven talkers with ALS and seven age and gender matched controls. RESULTS: Lower lip peak speeds were significantly lower in talkers with mild ALS than in healthy talkers suggesting a lower lip speed constraint in talkers with mild ALS. Jaw peak speeds tended to be lower, but jaw displacements tended to be larger in talkers with mild ALS than in healthy talkers. Because greater speeds are typically expected for larger displacements, outcomes also suggest a jaw speed constraint in talkers with mild ALS. CONCLUSIONS: Lower lip and jaw peak speeds may be sensitive measures to identify bulbar motor performance decline at an early stage of the disease when speaking rate and intelligibility are only minimally affected. LEARNING OUTCOMES: The reader will be able to explain two different articulatory strategies to increase speaking rate and understand why fast speech tasks and diadochokinetic pseudo-speech tasks are not suited to assess articulatory speed capacity in healthy and impaired talkers. The reader will also be able to explain how orofacial movement speed capacity can be tested using a fixed-target task and how ALS affects lower lip and jaw speed capacities during the early stages of the disease.

Electropalatography in the description and treatment of speech disorders in five children with cerebral palsy.

Some children with cerebral palsy have articulation disorders that are resistant to conventional speech therapy. The aim of this study was to investigate whether the visual feedback method of electropalatography (EPG) could be an effective tool for treating five children (mean age of 9.4 years) with dysarthria and cerebral palsy and to explore whether training improved the posteriorly placed articulation of the Swedish dental/alveolar target consonants /t/, /d/, /n/ and /s/ produced in different positions. An EPG analysis was conducted and some of the data were combined with a perceptual analysis. A more anterior placement was seen after treatment for the target sounds. Features of diagnostic importance revealed were unusual tongue-palate contacts, such as double articulation and abnormally retracted articulation. A possible change in stop closure duration was indicated. The results suggest that EPG could be of potential benefit for diagnosing, treating and describing articulation errors associated with cerebral palsy.

Accuracy of the NDI wave speech research system.

PURPOSE: This work provides a quantitative assessment of the positional tracking accuracy of the NDI Wave Speech Research System. METHOD: Three experiments were completed: (a) static rigid-body tracking across different locations in the electromagnetic field volume, (b) dynamic rigid-body tracking across different locations within the electromagnetic field volume, and (c) human jaw-movement tracking during speech. Rigid-body experiments were completed for 4 different instrumentation settings, permuting 2 electromagnetic field volume sizes with and without automated reference sensor processing. RESULTS: Within the anthropometrically pertinent "near field" (< 200 mm) of the NDI Wave field generator, at the 300-mm(3) volume setting, 88% of dynamic positional errors were < 0.5 mm and 98% were < 1.0 mm. Extreme tracking errors (> 2 mm) occurred within the near field for < 1% of position samples. For human jaw-movement tracking, 95% of position samples had < 0.5 mm errors for 9 out of 10 subjects. CONCLUSIONS: Static tracking accuracy is modestly superior to dynamic tracking accuracy. Dynamic tracking accuracy is best for the 300-mm(3) field setting in the 200-mm near field. The use of automated head correction has no deleterious effect on tracking. Tracking errors for jaw movements during speech are typically < 0.5 mm.

Articulatory-to-acoustic relations in response to speaking rate and loudness manipulations.

PURPOSE: In this investigation, the authors determined the strength of association between tongue kinematic and speech acoustics changes in response to speaking rate and loudness manipulations. Performance changes in the kinematic and acoustic domains were measured using two aspects of speech production presumably affecting speech clarity: phonetic specification and variability. METHOD: Tongue movements for the vowels /ia/ were recorded in 10 healthy adults during habitual, fast, slow, and loud speech using three-dimensional electromagnetic articulography. To determine articulatory-to-acoustic relations for phonetic specification, the authors correlated changes in lingual displacement with changes in acoustic vowel distance. To determine articulatory-to-acoustic relations for phonetic variability, the authors correlated changes in lingual movement variability with changes in formant movement variability. RESULTS: A significant positive linear association was found for kinematic and acoustic specification but not for kinematic and acoustic variability. Several significant speaking task effects were also observed. CONCLUSION: Lingual displacement is a good predictor of acoustic vowel distance in healthy talkers. The weak association between kinematic and acoustic variability raises questions regarding the effects of articulatory variability on speech clarity and intelligibility, particularly in individuals with motor speech disorders.

Thai speech and language norms for children 2 1/2 to 4 years of age.

OBJECTIVE: To create a Thai speech and language assessment tool and norms for children between 2 1/2 and 4 years of age (TSLT21/2-4). MATERIAL AND METHOD: The Thai speech and language assessment tool was created for children between 2 1/2 and 4 years of age using existing Thai and English speech and language development theory, research results and tests. In order to validate the norms, the speech and language skills were prospectively assessed in 4,169 normal children representing the five regions of Thailand. Language quotients, percentiles and Conbrach's Alpha coefficients were calculated for use as a reference for Thai language development norms. RESULTS: Speech and language norms for children age 2 1/2-4 years were presented. Most of the Cronbach's Alpha coefficients were good (equal or more than 70%). CONCLUSION: The Thai speech and language assessment tools and norms are useful for the assessment of speech and language for children with risk for delayed speech and language development (e.g., individuals with cleft lip and palate, global development delay, autism) in Thailand. The norms can also provide the guideline for "intervention planning".

Phonarticulatory diadochokinesis in young and elderly individuals.

The phonoarticulatory diadochokinesis test has been recommended to evaluate neurological disorders. It is a speech task that consists of the ability to repeat at high speed a segment of speech. The purpose of this research is to analyze the diadochokinesia rate of adults from two distinct age groups. 23 young adults and 23 elderly people, both sexes participated in this study. Each participant produced the /pa/, /ta/, /ka/ syllables, the vowel /a/ and the /pataka/ sequence, as fast and as long as they could with habitual pitch and loudness. The speech samples were analyzed by using the voice and speech analysis software Visi-Pitch III/Sona-Speech, KayElemetrics. Both groups presented with reduced diadochokinesia rate as the speech production became more complex. The young adults group presented with higher diadochokinesia rate in adults in all speech tasks while the elderly adults group had a worse intensity control.

Phonarticulatory diadochokinesis in young and elderly individuals / Diadococinesia fonoarticulatória em jovens e idosos

The phonoarticulatory diadochokinesis test has been recommended to evaluate neurological disorders. It is a speech task that consists of the ability to repeat at high speed a segment of speech. The purpose of this research is to analyze the diadochokinesia rate of adults from two distinct age groups. 23 young aice and speech analysis software Visi-Pitch III/Sona-Speech, KayElemetrics. Both groups presented with reduced diadochokinesia rate as the speech production became more complex. The young adults group presented with higher diadochokinesia rate in adults and 23 elderly people, both sexes participated in this study. Each participant produced the /pa/, /ta/, /ka/ syllables, the vowel /a/ and the /pataka/ sequence, as fast and as long as they could with habitual pitch and loudness. The speech samples were analyzed by using the voll speech tasks while the elderly adults group had a worse intensity control.

A prova de diadococinesia fonoarticulatória tem sido recomendada para transtornos neurológicos, sendo uma tarefa de fala que consiste na habilidade de realizar rápidas repetições de segmentos de fala. O objetivo deste estudo é analisar a velocidade de diadococinesia em sujeitos adultos em dois grupos etários distintos. Participaram 23 adultos jovens e 23 idosos, de ambos os sexos. Cada indivíduo emitiu as sílabas /pa/, /ta/, /ka/, a vogal /a/ e a seqüência /pataka/, o mais rapidamente e durante o maior tempo possível, em sua freqüência e intensidade habituais. Estas emissões foram analisadas no programa computadorizado de análise de voz e fala Visi-Pitch III/Sona-Speech, da KayElemetrics. Ambos os grupos apresentaram redução da velocidade diadococinética à medida que as emissões foram mais complexas. O grupo mais jovem apresentou velocidade diadococinética maior em todas as emissões enquanto o grupo de idosos teve pior controle de intensidade.

Accuracy assessment for AG500, electromagnetic articulograph.

PURPOSE: The goal of this article was to evaluate the accuracy and reliability of the AG500 (Carstens Medizinelectronik, Lenglern, Germany), an electromagnetic device developed recently to register articulatory movements in three dimensions. This technology seems to have unprecedented capabilities to provide rich information about time-varying positions of articulators. However, strengths and weaknesses of the system need to be better understood before the device is used for speech research. METHOD: Evaluations of the sensor positions over time were obtained during (a) movements of the calibration device, (b) manual movements of sensors in a cartridge within the recording field of the cube, and (c) various speech tasks. RESULTS: Results showed a median error to be under 0.5 mm across different types of recordings. The maximum error often ranged between 1 and 2 mm. The magnitude of error depended somewhat on the task but largely on the location of the sensors within the recording region of the cube. CONCLUSION: The performance of the system was judged as adequate for speech movement acquisition, provided that specific steps are taken for minimizing error during recording and for validating the quality of recorded data.

Effectiveness of speech analysis by self-organizing maps in children with developmental language disorders.

At present, more and more researchers are applying tested mathematical-engineering methods into different domains of life. One of these areas is helping people with different forms of disabilities. Research in this area is focused on searching for the relation between clinical and electrophysiological symptoms of children with developmental dysphasia. Sleep EEG and speech analyses are the primary areas under discussion, while the finding of methods acceptable for improvement of the diagnosis and determination of therapeutic procedures is the research topic. It is possible to reduce fundamentally, or to cure optimally these disorders in advanced diagnosis. Therefore it is important to search for new methods and to combine what has been used separately till now.

Dysarthric speech characteristics of Thai stroke patients.

The dysarthric speech characteristics of 14 Thai stroke patients were assessed by Computerized Articulation Test program 1. Each speaker had been tested for speech correctness of all Thai phonemes. As the results, the error patterns were analyzed. Vowels and tonal characteristics were the most intact characteristics, while speech reduction of the cluster consonants was the most impaired feature. Both initial and final consonants were frequently substituted, followed by omission and distortion. Generally, monophthong vowels, low and mid tone, and unaspirated consonants were produced more precisely than the other features.

[The tongue in the formation of articulated speech]. / Jkzyk w tworzeniu artykulowanej mowy.

The approach to problems related to the science of language often deviates from standards accepted in linguistics. This article contains comments to the subchapter "The tongues in the formation of articulated speech" from the tetextbook of Prof. Zofia Knychalskiej-Karwan entitles "The tongue. Physiology and pathology".