Oral Reading Prosody and Comprehension in Persons With Aphasia: A Preliminary Investigation

Area of Science:

• Speech and Language Pathology
• Neuroscience
• Linguistics

Background:

• Aphasia, a communication disorder resulting from brain damage, often affects oral reading abilities.
• Prosody, encompassing rhythm, stress, and intonation, plays a crucial role in conveying meaning during spoken language.
• Understanding prosodic alterations in persons with aphasia (PWA) is vital for assessing reading comprehension deficits.

Purpose of the Study:

• To acoustically characterize the oral reading prosody of PWA and neurotypical controls.
• To identify prosodic features most strongly associated with reading comprehension performance in PWA.
• To explore potential acoustic markers for reading comprehension difficulties in aphasia.

Main Methods:

• Acoustic analysis of oral reading using Praat software.
• Comparison of prosodic features (phrasing, intonation, expressivity) between PWA and matched controls.
• Correlation analysis between prosodic measures and reading comprehension scores.

Main Results:

• PWA showed significantly longer intersentential pause durations and prepausal syllables, along with increased pausal intrusions compared to controls.
• Several prosodic measures, including pause duration and pausal intrusions, were moderately correlated with reading comprehension in PWA.
• Prosodic features that differed significantly between groups also showed moderate correlations with comprehension in PWA.

Conclusions:

• Oral reading prosody in PWA differs significantly from neurotypical controls, particularly in pausing and fluency.
• Specific prosodic characteristics are associated with reading comprehension abilities in PWA.
• These preliminary findings highlight the potential of prosodic analysis as a tool for understanding and potentially addressing reading comprehension challenges in aphasia.