Quantitative acoustic metrics of vowel production in mandarin-speakers with post-stroke spastic dysarthria

ABSTRACT

Impairment of vowel production in dysarthria has been highly valued. This study aimed to explore the vowel production of Mandarin-speakers with post-stroke spastic dysarthria in connected speech and to explore the influence of gender and tone on the vowel production. Multiple vowel acoustic metrics, including F1 range, F2 range, vowel space area (VSA), vowel articulation index (VAI) and formant centralization ratio (FCR), were analyzed from vowel tokens embedded in connected speech produced. The participants included 25 clients with spastic dysarthria secondary to stroke (15 males, 10 females) and 25 speakers with no history of neurological disease (15 males, 10 females). Variance analyses were conducted and the results showed that the main effects of population, gender, and tone on F2 range, VSA, VAI, and FCR were all significant. Vowel production became centralized in the clients with post-stroke spastic dysarthria. Vowel production was found to be more centralized in males compared to females. Vowels in neutral tone (T0) were the most centralized among the other tones. The quantitative acoustic metrics of F2 range, VSA, VAI, and FCR were effective in predicting vowel production in Mandarin-speaking clients with post-stroke spastic dysarthria, and hence may be used as powerful tools to assess the speech performance for this population.

KEYWORDS:

• Spastic dysarthria
• post-stroke
• vowel production
• acoustic analysis
• mandarin

Acknowledgments

The authors are grateful to the staff of public hospitals in Shanghai for their support and the participants for their active involvement.

Author contributions

Shengnan Ge and Qin Wan contributed to the work equally. Shengnan Ge designed the study. All authors performed the data analyses and wrote the manuscript.

Statement of Interest

The authors report no conflicts of interest and are responsible for the content of this paper alone.

Additional information

Funding

This research was sponsored by the Peak Discipline Construction Project of Education at East China Normal University, and the National Social Science Fund of China (Grant No. 19BYY093).