Investingation of Sentence Intelligibility and Comprehensibility of Dysarthria Patients in Taiwan

• Main Authors: Chen, Ting-Chun, 陳婷珺
• Other Authors: Chen, Yea-Tzy
• Format: Others
• Language: zh-TW
• Published: 2017
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/7vhm4k

碩士 === 臺北市立大學 === 特殊教育學系 === 105 === This study aims to determine performance of sentence intelligibility and comprehensibility in Mandarin dysarthric speakers. This study was designed as a secondary data analysis which sources were from the Taiwanese Speech Dataset including sound files, background information, and the perceptual analyzing data. Data from thirty-three patients (Male =21, Female =14；Mage =61.5±2.5；Range =22-87) and ninety healthy controls (Male =48, Female =42；Mage =62.3±1.5；Range =22-87) were selected to use in the study. Investigator calculated and analyzed data based on the 18-sentence and a short-essay speech samples of the sound files. Study parameters included speech intelligibility, comprehensibility, speaking rate, and overall intelligibility. All data were then processed by using statistical analysis (p< .05). The result showed that dysarthric group exhibited significantly poorer sentence intelligibility and comprehensibility than those of the controls. Two groups as a whole demonstrated a positive correlation between intelligibility and comprehensibility. Moreover, intelligibility and speaking rate were the best predictor for comprehensibility, whereas demographic variables (i.e., sex, age, habitual language, education, social-economic status) and comprehensibility had no correlations. In addition, the experimental group also showed a significantly high positive correlation between sentence intelligibility and overall intelligibility, as well as the comprehensibility and overall intelligibility. It revealed that sentence intelligibility is different from comprehensibility involved in dysarthric speech, indicating that intelligibility and comprehensibility are as ones of the important indicators of dysarthria severity and a guideline for treatment goals. The results will provide clinicians more speech related information for evaluating and treating patients with dysarthria.