Dysarthria definitions and classification system

Question 1

Define dysarthria (4)

Answer 1

• A disorder of motor control and/or neuromuscular execution.
• Impaired execution of motor speech due to neuromuscular weakness or incoordination or speech musculature.
• Impairment in at least one of the speech subsystems: respiration, phonation, articulation, resonance, prosody
• Affecting naturalness and intelligibility

Question 2

Benefits of Mayo Clinic dysarthria classification

Answer 2

• Widely used by clinicians and researchers
• Helpful in intervention planning
• Good inter-rate reliability for intelligibility, no significant difference between experience and inexperiences listeners

Question 3

Limitations of Mayo Clinic dysarthria classification

Answer 3

• Limited neuropathological data (pre-sophisticated MRI techniques
• Small sample sizes
• People perceive the ratings as difficult make
• Lack of ‘clean’ diagnosis, eg. mixed dysarthrias
• Subjective (but good reliability)

Question 4

Deviant speech features: phonation - pitch

Answer 4

• Pitch level
• Pitch breaks
• Monopitch
• Voice tremor

Question 5

Deviant speech features: phonation - loudness

Answer 5

• Monoloudness
• Excess loudness variation
• Loudness decay
• Alternating loudness

Question 6

Deviant speech features: phonation - voice quality

Answer 6

• Harsh
• Hoarse
• Breathy (continuous or transient)
• Strained-strangled
• Voice stoppages

Question 7

Deviant speech features: resonance

Answer 7

• Hypernasality
• Hyponasality
• Nasal emission
• Weak pressure consonants

Question 8

Deviant speech features: respiration

Answer 8

• Forced inspiration/expiration
• Audible inspiration
• Grunt at end of expiration

Question 9

Deviant speech features: prosody

Answer 9

• Rate
• Short phrases
• Stress
• Silence

Question 10

Deviant speech features: articulation

Answer 10

• Imprecise consonants
• Prolonged phonemes
• Repeated phonemes
• Irregular articulatory breakdown
• Distorted vowels