Oral Motor Abilities Are Task Dependent: A Factor Analytic Approach to Performance Rate

ABSTRACT

Measures of performance rates in speech-like or volitional nonspeech oral motor tasks are frequently used to draw inferences about articulation rate abnormalities in patients with neurologic movement disorders. The study objective was to investigate the structural relationship between rate measures of speech and of oral motor behaviors different from speech. A total of 130 patients with neurologic movement disorders and 130 healthy subjects participated in the study. Rate data was collected for oral reading (speech), rapid syllable repetition (speech-like), and rapid single articulator movements (nonspeech). The authors used factor analysis to determine whether the different rate variables reflect the same or distinct constructs. The behavioral data were most appropriately captured by a measurement model in which the different task types loaded onto separate latent variables. The data on oral motor performance rates show that speech tasks and oral motor tasks such as rapid syllable repetition or repetitive single articulator movements measure separate traits.

Keywords:

• articulation rate
• articulatory diadochokinesis
• dysarthria
• speech motor control

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

The authors thank their collaborators at the Clinic for Neuropsychology, City Hospital Munich Bogenhausen (Prof. G. Goldenberg), the Department of Neurology, Ludwig-Maximilians-University Munich (Prof. S. Lorenzl, Dr. O. Pelykh, Dr. M. Schuberth), the Department of Neurology, University of Tübingen (Prof. L. Schöls, Prof. H. Ackermann), and the Center for Cerebral palsy Munich (Prof. R. Lampe, K. Strecker) for their support in patient recruitment. They also thank Verena Risch and Stefanie Schmid for their valuable assistance in data analyses and Dr. Karen Croot for helpful input to an earlier version of the manuscript. The authors are also grateful to all study participants. ReHa-Hilfe e.V. is acknowledged for its support.

FUNDING

The authors gratefully acknowledge the funding sources: Anja Staiger and Bettina Brendel were supported by a grant of the German Research Foundation (DFG, ZI469/15-1/2, AC55/6-3), and Theresa Schölderle was funded by a PhD fellowship from the German National Academic Foundation.