Characterization of Divergence in Impaired Speech of ALS Patients

Archna Bhatia, Bonnie J Dorr, Kristy Hollingshead, Samuel L. Phillips, Barbara McKenzie

Abstract: Approximately 80% to 95% of patients with Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS) eventually develop speech impairments (Beukelman et al., 2011), such as defective articulation, slow laborious speech and hy- pernasality (Duffy, 2013). The relation- ship between impaired speech and asymp- tomatic speech may be seen as a diver- gence from a baseline. This relationship can be characterized in terms of measur- able combinations of phonological charac- teristics that are indicative of the degree to which the two diverge. We demon- strate that divergence measurements based on phonological characteristics of speech correlate with physiological assessments of ALS. Speech-based assessments offer benefits over commonly-used physiologi- cal assessments in that they are inexpen- sive, non-intrusive, and do not require trained clinical personnel for administer- ing and interpreting the results.