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Speech features and their relationship to speech naturalness in ataxia
What is it about?
Speech production is a complex process involving the rapid, coordinated movement of muscles in the mouth, throat, and respiratory system. In cerebellar ataxia, the pathways in the brain responsible for coordination become disrupted over time. This degeneration in the brain can impact the naturalness of speech. But what factors contribute to our judgments of speech naturalness? In this study, we explored the relationships between specific speech features and the perceptual quality of speech naturalness. We found that objective measures of pitch and rate control were highly correlated with perceptual judgments of speech naturalness in participants with ataxia.
Why is it important?
Speech naturalness is highly subjective and notoriously difficult to measure.This study directly correlates objective acoustic data from commonly-used speech assessment tasks with perceptual judgments of speech naturalness. Our results inform our understanding of what speech characteristics may contribute to listeners' judgments of impaired speech naturalness in clinical populations. These findings can improve SLPs' assessments of speech naturalness and inform their selection of treatment approaches.