Voice Acoustic Instability During Spontaneous Speech in Parkinson's Disease.
Kara M Smith, Meaghan Demers-Peel, Christina Manxhari and 1 others
PMID 37500359WHAT IT FOUND
In people with Parkinson's disease, average pitch and pitch variability fell over the course of both reading and picture description.
The fall did not differ by cognitive impairment.
Key findings
01Average pitch and pitch variability fell from the first to the last utterance in both tasks.
02The size of the fall was similar between reading and picture description.
03The first-to-last fall did not differ by cognitive status.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for SLPs
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What it does not show
The paper reports 44 enrolled participants and also 44 in the overall cohort, but says a participant was excluded, so the analysed count is unclear. No people without Parkinson's disease were included. The picture description task came after a long stretch of continuous speech, so fatigue may have influenced the later utterances. The sample was small, and multiple comparisons were adjusted, so some effects may not have been detected. The picture description task produced different content from person to person, which adds variability and makes task comparisons less controlled. Respiratory function and articulatory precision were not measured, so they cannot be ruled out as contributors. Pitch measurement was manual and subjective, and the picture description task lacked additional raters to confirm consistency.
Declared interests
The authors declare no conflicts of interest.
The easy way to misread this
Do not conclude that cognitive impairment causes the voice fall during speaking. The first-to-last fall did not differ by cognitive impairment.
Summarised by AI from the full paper, without a clinician reviewing it. Check it against the source before it changes what you do. Read it on PubMed →