Characteristics of AMR in Apraxia of Speech: A Case Study

Kim, Yunjung

ORIGINAL ARTICLE

Commun Sci Disord. 2003;8(1): 168-182.

Yunjung Kim^`

김윤정(Yunjung Kim)

ABSTRACT

AMR(Alternating Movement Rate) is routinely used in the assessment of motor speech disorders and is central to many efforts to classify various types of motor speech disorders and to rate their severity. This study presents AMR data of AOS, focusing on temporal variabilities. Acoustic analyses were used to obtain quantitative information on several parameters including syllable rates, means, and variability for syllable duration and intersyllable gap duration and energy intensity. Regarding duration of AMR, the following results were obtained: (1) the syllable rate was moderately slower than normal speech, and reached normal or even increased acceleration values, (2) when the whole duration was divided into three parts, AMR performance at part 1 was similar to that of normal speech, especially syllable rate was faster than that of normal speech, and (3) during the task, syllable duration showed to become shorter while intersyllable durations became longer, and simultaneously standard deviation of both of these two durations became greater. Observations of the energy patterns in the syllable AMR task revealed considerable variations in both the energy maxima and the energy minima across a syllable train. In addition, the variation of energy maxima was slightly greater than that of energy minima. These results are in many respects consistent with earlier findings, regarding slow speaking rate and maximum syllable repetition of AOS or the relation between syllable duration and intersyllable duration. Furthermore this study highlights the needs to consider temporal aspects of AMR, especially in case of AOS, because the time parameter considerably affects the results of AOS’s performance.