PURPOSE: Perceptual learning paradigms involving written feedback appear to be a viable clinical tool to reduce the intelligibility burden of dysarthria. The underlying theoretical assumption is that pairing the degraded acoustics with the intended lexical targets facilitates a remapping of existing mental representations in the lexicon. This study investigated whether ties to mental representations can be strengthened by way of a somatosensory motor trace. METHOD: Following an intelligibility pretest, 100 participants were assigned to 1 of 5 experimental groups. The control group received no training, but the other 4 groups received training with dysarthric speech under conditions involving a unique combination of auditory targets, written feedback, and/or a vocal imitation task. All participants then completed an intelligibility posttest. RESULTS: Training improved intelligibility of dysarthric speech, with the largest improvements observed when the auditory targets were accompanied by both written feedback and an imitation task. Further, a significant relationship between intelligibility improvement and imitation accuracy was identified. CONCLUSIONS: This study suggests that somatosensory information can strengthen the activation of speech sound maps of dysarthric speech. The findings, therefore, implicate a bidirectional relationship between speech perception and speech production as well as advance our understanding of the mechanisms that underlie perceptual learning of degraded speech.
RCT Entities:
PURPOSE: Perceptual learning paradigms involving written feedback appear to be a viable clinical tool to reduce the intelligibility burden of dysarthria. The underlying theoretical assumption is that pairing the degraded acoustics with the intended lexical targets facilitates a remapping of existing mental representations in the lexicon. This study investigated whether ties to mental representations can be strengthened by way of a somatosensory motor trace. METHOD: Following an intelligibility pretest, 100 participants were assigned to 1 of 5 experimental groups. The control group received no training, but the other 4 groups received training with dysarthric speech under conditions involving a unique combination of auditory targets, written feedback, and/or a vocal imitation task. All participants then completed an intelligibility posttest. RESULTS: Training improved intelligibility of dysarthric speech, with the largest improvements observed when the auditory targets were accompanied by both written feedback and an imitation task. Further, a significant relationship between intelligibility improvement and imitation accuracy was identified. CONCLUSIONS: This study suggests that somatosensory information can strengthen the activation of speech sound maps of dysarthric speech. The findings, therefore, implicate a bidirectional relationship between speech perception and speech production as well as advance our understanding of the mechanisms that underlie perceptual learning of degraded speech.
Authors: Kaitlin L Lansford; Stephani Luhrsen; Erin M Ingvalson; Stephanie A Borrie Journal: Am J Speech Lang Pathol Date: 2018-02-06 Impact factor: 2.408
Authors: Kaitlin L Lansford; Stephanie A Borrie; Tyson S Barrett; Cassidy Flechaus Journal: J Speech Lang Hear Res Date: 2020-05-20 Impact factor: 2.297