A study on affecting factors of speaking rate control methods used in dysarthria rehabilitation (1st Report)

Abstract

Speech rate control is a common approach to speech rehabilitation for patients with dysarthria. There are several different rate control methods and their efficacy varies by dysarthria type and among individuals. As we sometimes encounter dysarthric patients in clinical practice who seem to have difficulties in perceiving and memorizing tempo, knowing how they perceive and memorize speech rate would appear to be one of the important prerequisites for rehabilitation intervention based on rate control methods. In this study, five dysarthric patients, 13 healthy young individuals and 10 healthy elderly individuals performed seven different tests to investigate the following outputs and abilities: rates of speech and tapping produced with and without listening to reference samples, perception of speech and tapping rates, and differentiation of regular rhythms from irregular ones. The healthy individuals performed well on all seven tasks, while some patients with dysarthria experienced problems with tempo perception and memorization. These findings suggest that perception and memorization functions for speech rate in dysarthric patients need to be assessed first in rehabilitation interventions to determine an appropriate speech rate control method.