Michael T Compton1, Anya Lunden2, Sean D Cleary3, Luca Pauselli4, Yazeed Alolayan5, Brooke Halpern6, Beth Broussard6, Anthony Crisafio7, Leslie Capulong6, Pierfrancesco Maria Balducci8, Francesco Bernardini9, Michael A Covington10. 1. Columbia University College of Physicians & Surgeons, Department of Psychiatry, New York, NY, USA. Electronic address: mtc2176@cumc.columbia.edu. 2. College of William and Mary, Department of English, Linguistics Program, Williamsburg, VA, USA. 3. The George Washington University Milken Institute School of Public Health, Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics, Washington, DC, USA. 4. Columbia University College of Physicians & Surgeons, Department of Psychiatry, New York, NY, USA. 5. Case Western Reserve University, Department of Neurology, Cleveland, OH, USA. 6. Lenox Hill Hospital, New York, NY, USA. 7. The George Washington University School of Medicine and Health Sciences, Washington, DC, USA. 8. University of Perugia, Department of Medicine, Section of Psychiatry, Perugia, Italy. 9. Université Libre de Bruxelles, Erasme Hospital, Department of Psychiatry, Anderlecht, Belgium. 10. The University of Georgia, Institute for Artificial Intelligence, Athens, GA, USA.
Abstract
OBJECTIVE: Acoustic phonetic methods are useful in examining some symptoms of schizophrenia; we used such methods to understand the underpinnings of aprosody. We hypothesized that, compared to controls and patients without clinically rated aprosody, patients with aprosody would exhibit reduced variability in: pitch (F0), jaw/mouth opening and tongue height (formant F1), tongue front/back position and/or lip rounding (formant F2), and intensity/loudness. METHODS: Audiorecorded speech was obtained from 98 patients (including 25 with clinically rated aprosody and 29 without) and 102 unaffected controls using five tasks: one describing a drawing, two based on spontaneous speech elicited through a question (Tasks 2 and 3), and two based on reading prose excerpts (Tasks 4 and 5). We compared groups on variation in pitch (F0), formant F1 and F2, and intensity/loudness. RESULTS: Regarding pitch variation, patients with aprosody differed significantly from controls in Task 5 in both unadjusted tests and those adjusted for sociodemographics. For the standard deviation (SD) of F1, no significant differences were found in adjusted tests. Regarding SD of F2, patients with aprosody had lower values than controls in Task 3, 4, and 5. For variation in intensity/loudness, patients with aprosody had lower values than patients without aprosody and controls across the five tasks. CONCLUSIONS: Findings could represent a step toward developing new methods for measuring and tracking the severity of this specific negative symptom using acoustic phonetic parameters; such work is relevant to other psychiatric and neurological disorders.
OBJECTIVE: Acoustic phonetic methods are useful in examining some symptoms of schizophrenia; we used such methods to understand the underpinnings of aprosody. We hypothesized that, compared to controls and patients without clinically rated aprosody, patients with aprosody would exhibit reduced variability in: pitch (F0), jaw/mouth opening and tongue height (formant F1), tongue front/back position and/or lip rounding (formant F2), and intensity/loudness. METHODS: Audiorecorded speech was obtained from 98 patients (including 25 with clinically rated aprosody and 29 without) and 102 unaffected controls using five tasks: one describing a drawing, two based on spontaneous speech elicited through a question (Tasks 2 and 3), and two based on reading prose excerpts (Tasks 4 and 5). We compared groups on variation in pitch (F0), formant F1 and F2, and intensity/loudness. RESULTS: Regarding pitch variation, patients with aprosody differed significantly from controls in Task 5 in both unadjusted tests and those adjusted for sociodemographics. For the standard deviation (SD) of F1, no significant differences were found in adjusted tests. Regarding SD of F2, patients with aprosody had lower values than controls in Task 3, 4, and 5. For variation in intensity/loudness, patients with aprosody had lower values than patients without aprosody and controls across the five tasks. CONCLUSIONS: Findings could represent a step toward developing new methods for measuring and tracking the severity of this specific negative symptom using acoustic phonetic parameters; such work is relevant to other psychiatric and neurological disorders.
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