Abstract

People with aphasia (PWA) experience deficits in utilizing prosody, which drastically impacts their communicative effectiveness. The lack of prosody in people with aphasia may alter their ability to nurture meaningful relationships, advance educational and work opportunities, and participate in community activities. This study acoustically evaluates the prosodic characteristics of speech produced by individuals with non-fluent aphasia to better understand how to accurately assess and more effectively treat communication difficulties in PWA. Recorded speech samples derived from a Cinderella story retell from 16 individuals with moderate Broca's aphasia and 16 age-matched controls were acoustically analyzed in this study. The recordings were downloaded from AphasiaBank, a database collected from a wide variety of speech tasks produced by individuals with varying types and severity of aphasia, as well as control subjects. Differences as a function of the participants' aphasia status and the chronological location in the speech sample were examined using an Analysis of Variance (ANOVA). The associations between the speakers' Aphasia Quotient (AQ), mean length of utterance, and the extracted pitch and intensity measures were evaluated through Pearson correlations. No significant main effects or interactions were identified for any pitch or intensity measures across speech sample locations or participant aphasia status. However, significant correlations between pitch and intensity measures were noted. Overall, a deeper understanding of prosody in this population can aid clinicians in developing more effective assessment tools and treatment approaches. These advancements have the potential to enhance communicative effectiveness, enabling individuals with Broca's aphasia to build meaningful relationships, pursue educational and career opportunities, and actively engage in their communities.

Degree

College and Department

David O. McKay School of Education; Communication Disorders

Rights

https://lib.byu.edu/about/copyright/