The impact of rate reduction and increased loudness on fundamental frequency characteristics in dysarthria

Objective: This study examined the extent to which articulatory rate reduction and increased loudness were associated with adjustments in utterance-level measures of fundamental frequency (F₀) variability for speakers with dysarthria and healthy controls that have been shown to impact on intelligibility in previously published studies. More generally, the current study sought to compare and contrast how a slower-than-normal rate and increased vocal loudness impact on a variety of utterance-level F₀ characteristics for speakers with dysarthria and healthy controls. Patients and Methods: Eleven speakers with Parkinson's disease, 15 speakers with multiple sclerosis, and 14 healthy control speakers were audio recorded while reading a passage in habitual, loud, and slow conditions. Magnitude production was used to elicit variations in rate and loudness. Acoustic measures of duration, intensity and F₀ were obtained. Results and Conclusions: For all speaker groups, a slower-than-normal articulatory rate and increased vocal loudness had distinct effects on F₀ relative to the habitual condition, including a tendency for measures of F₀ variation to be greater in the loud condition and reduced in the slow condition. These results suggest implications for the treatment of dysarthria.