Acoustic characteristics in relation to intelligibility reduction in noise for speakers with Parkinson's disease

Decreased speech intelligibility in noisy environments is frequently observed in speakers with Parkinson's disease (PD). This study investigated which acoustic characteristics across the speech subsystems contributed to poor intelligibility in noise for speakers with PD. Speech samples were obtained from 13 speakers with PD and five healthy controls reading 56 sentences. Intelligibility analysis was conducted in quiet and noisy listening conditions. Seventy-two young listeners transcribed the recorded sentences in quiet and another 72 listeners transcribed in noise. The acoustic characteristics of the speakers with PD who experienced large intelligibility reduction from quiet to noise were compared to those with smaller intelligibility reduction in noise and healthy controls. The acoustic measures in the study included second formant transitions, cepstral and spectral measures of voice (cepstral peak prominence and low/high spectral ratio), pitch variation, and articulation rate to represent speech components across speech subsystems of articulation, phonation, and prosody. The results show that speakers with PD who had larger intelligibility reduction in noise exhibited decreased second formant transition, limited cepstral and spectral variations, and faster articulation rate. These findings suggest that the adverse effect of noise on speech intelligibility in PD is related to speech changes in the articulatory and phonatory systems.