RECEPTIVE PROSODY AND PARKINSONS-DISEASE

The effects of Parkinson's disease (PD) on the receptive processing of speech prosody were explored in 11 PD patients and 11 matched control subjects. The ability to discriminate prosodic patterns and identify specific linguistic or emotional attributes of prosodic stimuli were a ssessed independently; moreover, the identification of prosodic cues w as tested both locally (phonemic stress perception) and over the sente ntial domain (prosodic pattern identification). Results indicated a ge neral reduction in the ability of the PD patients to comprehend the li nguistic and emotional meaning of sentence-level prosody, without a co ncurrent loss in the ability to discriminate prosodic patterns or disa mbiguate phonemic stress contrasts.