Aspects of speech rate and regularity in Parkinson's disease

The hypokinetic dysarthria of Parkinson's disease (PD) has been defined as a multidimensional impairment leading to abnormalities in speech breathing, phonation, articulation and prosody. The aspect of prosody can be subdivided into further dimensions, as for example stress and accentuation, intonation variability and speech rate and regularity. According to available data from literature and findings of our own published studies, the present review illuminates the concept that inconstancies of speech fluency in PD are characterized by modifications of the arrangement of speech pauses and by a tendency of pace acceleration in the course of the performance. Furthermore, on the level of single utterances, Parkinsonian speakers feature significant difficulties to steadily repeat single syllables without accelerating or slowing down the pace as we were able to show in a series of published investigations. Evidence from literature and our own work justifies the hypothesis that the characteristic abnormalities in speech articulatory rate and regularity might serve as a marker of disease progression in PD.