Open AccessAcoustic characteristics of Italian Parkinsonian speech: a study on early-stage patients
Author(s) -
Marta Mercedes Maffia,
Rosa De Micco,
Alessandro Tessitore,
Anna De Meo
Publication year - 2020
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Conference proceedings
DOI - 10.36505/exling-2020/11/0029/000444
Subject(s) - audiology , stage (stratigraphy) , speech production , parkinson's disease , duration (music) , psychology , disease , medicine , speech recognition , computer science , acoustics , biology , physics , paleontology
Parkinson’s Disease (PD) is a neurological illness which also has effects on speech production, resulting in segmental and suprasegmental abnormalities. The aim of the current study is to test the validity of two acoustic parameters - %V and VtoV - for the detection of rhythmical variation in early-stage PD speech, in comparison to healthy speech. 40 Italian native speakers were enrolled in the research, 20 early-stage PD subjects and 20 neurologically healthy and matched controls, and a corpus of read speech was collected. The results of voice analysis confirmed an alteration of vocalic duration and %V in PD productions. In particular, %V could be a reliable cue for PD speech characterization, even at the very early onset of the disease.